Curriculum

Our Vision For Our Curriculum

At All Saints Academy our core aim is to engender a deep sense of wonder about the world and a fundamental desire to learn and keep learning; enabling, inspiring and motivating all children to grow and develop as individuals and a collective. To support us in this, we have designed a coherent and relevant curriculum that enables all children to develop the skills and access ‘powerful knowledge’ that will enable every individual to reach their full potential. 

We provide a learning environment that enables children to thrive and develop as learners. We want to empower children to be prepared to take risks, learn with growing independence and develop skills that enable them to fly high academically, socially and physically. The community of our school is made up of two thirds military families. This impacts upon all aspects of our provision and outcomes. The mobility created by service life means that we have children joining from the education systems of other areas and countries and pupils often leave or join mid-year. We also have one third of our population, that while relatively stable, are still impacted by the effects of mobility. Our curriculum is based upon the National Curriculum because this gives pupils the greatest chance of curriculum cohesion and progression when moving between schools. Our curriculum and systems also support pupils to become resilient to this situation so that their educational chances are not negatively impacted upon by service life. Consequently, they are well prepared for the next stages of their learning and education.

Our curriculum is designed to:

• Enable children to acquire powerful, coherent and cumulative knowledge alongside progressively developing skills and understanding. The intent is that these are secured through application (over time and in different contexts) in order to develop understanding (change in long term memory), and allows them to seek meaning and achieve personal growth;
• Progressively build upon a strong foundation of prior learning over time, preparing them well for the next stage of learning;
• Inspire children to take on ‘the mantle of expert’ and be successful individuals: authors, mathematicians, historians, musicians, artists, sportspeople, scientists, innovators, positive citizens;
• Promote the core values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance, with particular regard to the current Equalities Act.
• Make learning irresistible and enable them to be successful not only within school but also the wider community.

We ensure that our provision effectively promotes the following components, ensuring that each area is adapted to meet the contextual needs of all learners:

Enable pupils:	Specifically to:
1) To have positive values	– take responsibility and develop personal independence; – gain cultural breadth
2) To have quality knowledge, skills and understanding	– develop a sense of awe and wonder and secure a love of learning; – acquire new knowledge that builds upon rich prior knowledge and contributes to an understanding of cause and effect, allowing pupils to seek meaning – develop a skill-set that supports their ability to be successful in life, achieve personal growth, developing the confidence to embrace new experiences and cope with challenge; – accessing a broad, balanced, conceptually stretching, relevant and contextually useful curricular offer that is built on high expectations of what pupils should be capable of achieving;
3) To be emotionally intelligent	– be articulate and express themselves appropriately and with confidence in a range of social settings
4) To stay safe and be healthy	– recognise the importance of nutrition and exercise; – stay safe in their local context; – know how to stay safe online; – know how to stay safe from harm and to know who to speak to if they are worried.
5) To be a critical thinker	– make well-informed decisions and develop skills that will equip them for life, for example financial awareness, importance of punctuality etc; – logically and progressively build knowledge, skills and understanding around key concepts.
6) To have positive behaviours and attitudes	– be tolerant and accepting of themselves and others; – seek to be a strong role model for others within the school and community; – develop kindness, care and empathy; – make a positive contribution to society; – do more than they thought possible and have clarity of aspiration; – build resilience; – understand the importance of education and to attend school punctually and regularly.

Curriculum Implementation

At All Saints Academy, we believe that effective implementation of the curriculum is critical to pupils making the best possible progress during their time in school. Learning time is used effective to maximise access to a rich and broad curriculum and to ensure equity for all pupils.

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and supports all areas of school life. We believe that every child should have access to quality, inspirational reading material in order to develop a keen interest in the written word, which will stay with them throughout life. We strive to instil in our children a sense of excitement, fun and pleasure that can be derived through reading. It is recognised that reading permeates the curriculum so texts are sharply matched to challenge and engage all learners in all subjects.

Curriculum planning is rigorous, relevant, coherent and sequenced, and that it enables knowledge and skills to be closely interconnected. There is a high focus upon ensuring that the knowledge gained by pupils is progressive over time and leads to understanding and enables the pupils to build upon and make links to prior knowledge. There are opportunities for pupils to practise what they know to deepen their understanding, and ensuring the layering of knowledge and concepts is secure so that pupils can make progress from their starting points, with schemes of learning delivered in a cohesive, rigorous, engaging and progressive plan between year groups.

Teaching is organised in a coherent manner to support progress and supported by strategically designed and personalised CPD. Teachers are expected to develop the subject knowledge necessary to ensure planning supports progression through content and the school provides support to aid them in this. We believe that implementation of a strong curriculum to secure intent is dependent upon high quality teaching and pedagogy. This is reflected within the staff CPD to ensure that our teachers are skilled and knowledgeable in the art of teaching. Furthermore, we seek to ensure that professional development includes access to the latest research and is impacts upon securing highly effective classroom practice.

We believe that learning should be irresistible, so that the children cannot help but learn. These often are the ‘hook’ into the learning and are hands on, real life experiences which are highly engaging for example: a ‘real life’ alien space ship landing on the field to stimulate newspaper report writing and a CSI crime scene in science to create a ‘who’s done it?’. Visits and experiences are carefully planned to provide the children with first-hand accounts and experiences with deepen their learning experiences.

At All Saints Academy we have a rich and varied extra-curricular offer in place, so that pupils can develop skills and interests that they may not experience within the core curriculum.

Teachers set high expectations for all pupils. They use appropriate assessment to set ambitious targets and plan challenging work for all groups. Teachers record assessments for all subjects to ensure that pupils are making progress in their understanding and skills. Children not meeting expectations are identified through this and teachers are able to adapt provision to support them in closing the gaps with their peers. These assessments also inform curriculum design.

Curriculum Impact

The impact of the curriculum will be that pupils:

• are ready for the next stage of their life and learning journey;
• are able to express their views articulately, confidently and appropriately for a range of audiences;
• achieve highly relative to their starting points and peers nationally and locally;
• acquire a wide range of skills and interests;
• display empathy with issues and factors that affect humanity and the environment;
• demonstrate respect and tolerance for the views of others;
• have the knowledge they need to stay safe from harm, have strategies for managing factors that could compromise their safety, and know who to speak to if they are worried;
• lead healthy lives.

“Our school is like an Aladdin’s cave, people just wouldn’t believe all the good things that go on here.” (One of our 9 year old students.)

Irresistible Learning Opportunities

We believe that learning should be irresistible, so that the children cannot help but learn. These often are the ‘hook’ into the learning and are hands on, real life experiences which are highly engaging for example: a ‘real life’ alien space ship landing on the field to stimulate newspaper report writing or a CSI crime scene in science to create a ‘who’s done it?’

Visits and Experiences

Visits and experiences are carefully planned to provide the children with first-hand accounts and experiences with deepen their learning experiences. The governors in consultation with parents and our RAF community have decided to continue to use our Service Pupil Premium to fund enrichment opportunities such as visits and visitors to enhance the quality and breadth of learning experience.

All year 6 have the chance to take part in a residential visit

Extra-Curricular Offer

At All Saints Academy we aim to have a rich and varied extra-curricular offer, so that pupils can develop skills and interests that they may not experience within the core curriculum. Each year we ask the School Council to feedback on the opportunities the children would like the school to offer, we then look at how we can accommodate these requests. Extra- curricular activities have in the past, included: dance, football, netball, board games, yoga, mindfulness and cookery.

Sex and Relationship Education

Within Sex and relationship education, we aim to provide children with the knowledge and skills to cope with the physical and emotional changes of growing up.

We invite all parents to a workshop where they can view teaching materials used and discuss any concerns with a member of staff

Parents have the right to withdraw their children from any of these sessions if they feel it is necessary

For further information in relation to our curriculum please contact:

Foundation Stage	Sophie Addison
Key Stage 1	Cat Wright
Year 3/ 4	Victoria Maycock
Year 5/ 6	Kirsty Webb

For more information about the National Curriculum, please click here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum

Long Term Plans

Phonics and Reading

Developing the ability to read independently is an essential part of any child’s learning. At All Saints Academy, we strive to develop a passion for reading in all of our pupils. The love of books gives a lifetime of learning, excitement, enjoyment and the ability to be informed and learn with an eyes wide open perspective upon the world.

Our primary aim is to create confident and resilient lifelong learners who are prepared to take on challenges and apply their reading and writing skills, secured by our phonics offer, across the curriculum and throughout their life. As we believe that all children can become fluent and empowered readers and writers, we teach reading through ‘Little Wandle’ – Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a validated systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Foundation Stage and, through phases, the children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering decoding to spell and blending to read as they move through school.

Alongside the phonics teaching in Foundation Stage and Year One, our pupils also read books within the scheme ‘Big Cat’ for ‘Little Wandle’. When ready, the children continue their reading development with access to books that are banded by content and ability. Teachers build reading into all of their lessons, regularly assessing the children’s reading capability, through assessments and guided reading sessions, to ensure that the children are being engaged and challenged by the texts they read.

Little Wandle Phonics

Our school has chosen Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as our systematic, synthetic phonics (SSP) programme to teach early reading and spelling. 

Reading VIPERS

We use Reading VIPERS to support children with their reading comprehension skills. All children will be working on VIPERS during class reading, whether it is reading as a class, in a small group, or one-to-one with an adult. We also encourage our parents to refer to VIPERS when they listen to their child read at home.
This poster is displayed in all classrooms. Up to the end of Year 2, the ‘S’ stands for ‘Sequence’. Once children have moved into Year 3, the ‘S’ stand for ‘Summarise’, which is a more demanding skill.

English Curriculum

Maths Curriculum