Curriculum Intent
Our curriculum at Stillness Infant school has been designed and constructed with the following 6 main drivers in mind:
- To encourage all our children to become ambitious, capable and curious learners
- To reflect, celebrate, and meet the needs of our local context
- To develop our children’s skills and knowledge by delivering a coherent, progressive curriculum
- To ensure our children are equipped with a wide range of vocabulary
- To provide a rich diet of learning experiences to help our children become well-rounded, happy, informed individuals.
- To give our children the skills they need to develop a lifelong love of reading.
VALUES
Our curriculum is derived from the National Curriculum and Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. It is underpinned by the Values Based Education status we hold. This gives learners access to an ethical vocabulary based on human and British values, working for a sustainable, compassionate and peaceful future.
Our curriculum is ambitious and inclusive. We support all children to achieve highly, challenging them at their level through the texts we use, the activities we do, and the questions we ask. It is designed to enable children with SEND to develop their knowledge, skills and abilities to apply what they know and can do with increasing fluency and independence. We skilfully adapt our curriculum to meet the needs of all children, including disadvantaged children, or children with SEND or EAL, giving them the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. All our children engage in a full range of cultural experiences, for examples regular visits to London, performing with the London Symphony orchestra, and creating an art exhibition with the National Gallery.
DIVERSE COMMUNITY
The curriculum reflects and celebrates our diverse community and strives to ensure children’s wellbeing and safety. We use our value of Equality to guide us in our curriculum design, providing positive, non- stereotyping information regarding all protected characteristics. Mutual respect is embraced through our curriculum, providing opportunities for children to express their views in a safe environment and experience diversity within our school.
PROGRESSION AND SEQUENCE
Our curriculum is coherently structured and sequenced to ensure our children gain a rich and wide range of skills, knowledge and vocabulary, effectively built upon year on year. This prepares them for their future learning. We decide on the important knowledge and skills that children should learn. Our children need to be able to make links between what is being taught and what they already know. Lessons are carefully sequenced to ensure that learning is revisited, deepened and used as a basis to acquire new learning and the real possibility that the knowledge enters the long-term memory.
VOCABULARY RICH
Our curriculum reflects our understanding that vocabulary size is important for all children to be successful. We ensure explicit teaching of subject- specific words and general academic words which help the children understand and make sense of what is being said in the classroom and beyond. Having more vocabulary at their disposal enables them to articulate themselves with greater clarity and to communicate effectively with fluency and confidence with different audiences.
BROAD EXPERIENCES
The curriculum is broad and engaging, inspiring children to explore and be curious, providing opportunities for every child to discover their particular talents.
We use our local area and the rich opportunities in London to create first hand experiences for the children. This makes the curriculum purposeful, memorable and fun. Our curriculum offer centres around a wide range of visits, visitors, workshops, and special curriculum events, for example ‘Take one picture whole school exhibition’, watching duck eggs hatch, holding a piece of moon rock, meeting a dinosaur or dancing with a Chinese dragon. We proactively welcome and involve parents in their children’s learning, utilising their skills and expertise to enhance our curriculum, as well as providing parent workshops.
READING
Reading is a priority at our school. Leaders are determined that every child will become a confident, fluent reader as quickly as possible, regardless of their background, needs or abilities. Inevitably, fluent readers will learn more, because they can read and gain knowledge for themselves. Our systematic phonics teaching gives children a step up to reading for pleasure. Children are inspired to read across the curriculum subjects to learn more about the world in which they live, through the knowledge gained from reading high quality texts across curriculum subjects, author visits and access to high quality book collections.
To find out more about our curriculum please use the links below.
Whole School Curriculum Map 2022-23
Year 2 Yearly Overview 2022-23
Year 1 Yearly Overview 2022-23
Reception Yearly Overview 2022-23
Nursery Yearly Overview 2022-23
Nursery Curriculum Map – Autumn 1 2023
Reception Curriculum Map – Autumn 1 2023
Y1 Curriculum Map – Autumn 1 2023
Y2 Curriculum Map – Autumn 1 2023
