At Watchlytes our curriculum has been carefully designed for our pupils and their community. We want pupils to leave Watchlytes with a love of learning, a thirst for knowledge and be ready for the next stage in their education.
Pupils will become resilient learners, who understand that making mistakes is a valuable part of the learning process and that working hard will enable them to achieve.
This underpins our school values and growth mindset beliefs. We want our pupils to realise their potential, respect differences and go out into the world as successful citizens.
Drivers
Our drivers are elements that are central to our school vision and ethos. They help to drive and shape the curriculum and are incorporated across all subjects and themes
Vocabulary – to ensure our pupils can communicate effectively, using language effectively and ambitiously
Opportunities and possibilities – to raise aspirations and broaden horizons showing curiosity and fearlessness of what is new or unknown.
Independence – to ensure our pupils develop the life skills necessary to work with growing independence and perseverance and to develop a commitment to learning and self-improvement.
Schemes
To develop children’s reading and spelling skills, we use a systematic, synthetic phonics programme in Early Years and Key Stage 1. We use the scheme ‘Read, Write Inc’. We start by introducing aspects of the programme in your child’s Nursery year, and then fully implement the programme in Reception, continuing until they have progressed through the whole reading scheme; usually this is during years One or Two.
Children start by learning the Set 1 sounds and progress to learning sounds that pairs or groups of letters make (Special Friends). Click here to hear the sounds your child will learn.
Children are then taught to use Fred Talk and to blend these sounds together. Once your child can blend the sounds, they will start to read green words using the sounds they have learnt. As soon as children can read green words, they begin to read stories in their Read, Write, Inc sessions. Each storybook is matched to the sounds they can already read, which sets them up for success and helps to build their confidence with reading. It is through these storybooks that we teach children red words, which are irregular words that are not phonetically plausible and cannot be sounded out (Fred talked). Each storybook is taught in the same way, with children practising reading the green words in the story and also the red words, before they begin to read the book. Children will then read the book several times to help build their fluency and comprehension skills.
Children are taught in small groups which reflect their phonic knowledge and reading fluency. We regularly assess children so that they are taught in a RWI group which matches their phonic knowledge. We make sure that pupils read books that are closely matched to their increasing phonic ability so they experience early reading success and gain confidence that they are readers.
Once children are able to read words and stories, they will bring home a reading book that matches the one they have read in their phonics group. Please support your child to read this book.
From Year 2 our writing curriculum follows The Write Stuff programme. This is linked to the National curriculum statements, ensuring the different writing genres and grammar elements are met in a structured way.
Early Years use the White Rose maths approach to support the EYFS mathematics curriculum. ‘Maths No Problem’ (linked to the National Curriculum) is the starting point for all planning in KS1 and KS2 and enables children to develop mastery in maths.
We teach BSL (British sign language) from Reception to Year 5. Year 6 are taught French as an intensive language programme in the Summer term.
History and geography is planned from the cross-curricular ‘Primary Connected’ Collins Scheme.
Science is taught using the Hamilton scheme, which uses hands-on investigative science activities to promote a deep understanding of scientific concepts and helps children develop effective methods of scientific enquiry.
The resource ‘KAPOW’ is used to teach computing, art design, design technology and music in all years.
Our teachers teach children musical skills using the ‘KAPOW’ scheme and they have focused singing assemblies every week.
We use 1decision resources to support PSHE, RSE, Health education, SMSC development, and safeguarding.
For Religious Education we follow Discovery RE which is an enquiry-based scheme for 3-11 year olds. The scheme fosters our growth mindset principles and enables the children to become ‘critical thinkers’.
We use the Complete PE scheme which supports us to teach children a range of PE skills. They therefore have lessons in dance, gymnastics, sports and games, as well as swimming in year 4 (Years 5 and 6 currently have extra swimming sessions to catch up following closures during Covid pandemic).
We extend the sports curriculum by offering after school clubs and focus sports events.
Curriculum overviews
Coming soon!
Assessment
Assessment lies at the heart of promoting children’s learning. It provides a framework for setting targets, planning work and for monitoring and communicating children’s progress. Our learning culture, based around Growth Mindset, plus the use of Formative Assessment and Fast Feedback strategies, enables assessment to be carried out in partnership with children and supports pupil attainment and progression.
Progress is assessed against age-related expectations at the end of each key stage as set out in the 2014 National Curriculum for KS1 and KS2 and in the Early Years Foundation Stage assessment arrangements.
