Broadgate Primary School

“The national curriculum provides an outline of core knowledge around which teachers can develop exciting and stimulating lessons to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills as part of the wider school curriculum.”

The Primary National Curriculum in England

Broadgate Primary School is a highly inclusive mainstream school that caters for a diverse range of needs, backgrounds and abilities.  In order to achieve our ethos of “happy, successful and confident” we have worked hard to design a curriculum that meets the needs of all our pupils regardless of any barriers to learning they may have.

Broadgate Primary School’s curriculum is carefully planned to ensure that we are meeting all the requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage and National Curriculum, and that learning is progressive, allowing children to succeed at whichever level they are working.  The intent of our curriculum from Nursery through to Y6, is to create happy, successful and confident learners.

Broadgate Primary School’s curriculum is language rich

Teachers carefully plan lessons to ensure that children are developing a wide and rich vocabulary that is appropriate to the subject knowledge being learned.  Children are then given lots of opportunities to talk in lessons (to a range of audiences), which then gives them the ability to use the new vocabulary they are learning.

Broadgate Primary School’s curriculum is supportive

We have a strong PSHE curriculum that allows children to explore issues and feelings in a safe environment.  They learn how to keep themselves healthy (physically and emotionally) and safe (in the real world and in the digital world), and how to respect the views and beliefs of others.  We have a strong pastoral team in the school who can support children further if they feel they need additional opportunities to discuss issues that may be having an impact on them.

Broadgate Primary School’s curriculum is social

Children have lots of opportunities to work with and alongside other children in pairs, groups and whole class activities.  We give children opportunities to work with children from different year groups so that they develop a sense of their place and role in the school community as a whole.  This, in turn helps to prepare them to be active citizens in adulthood.

Broadgate Primary School’s curriculum is inspirational

Through a variety of approaches, which include theme days (class and whole school) educational visits, practical and real life experiences and outdoor learning in our school and local environment, children are keen and enthusiastic to learn.  They enjoy the wide variety of topics we teach and the activities that go with them.  This enjoyment enables them to understand the concepts we are teaching and retain the knowledge they are learning.

Broadgate Primary School’s curriculum is relevant

When teachers plan each topic they ensure that each learning intention is set in a context that children understand.  This may be based on the children’s prior school (and home) experiences, and aims to build on knowledge they have learned on their journey through our school.  We aim to ensure that all the learning children do in school will prepare them for life in the 21^st Century world, and for future academic and personal success.

Broadgate Primary School’s curriculum is accessible

Where possible (and particularly in our Early Years) teachers plan learning experiences that come directly from the children’s own experiences and interests.  Children are taught how to be independent learners and how to be effective learners.  We use our virtual learning environment to encourage children to research for themselves and older children undertake personal research projects linked to their current topic in the form of learning logs.  We allow children to record their learning in a variety of ways so that all children are able to succeed.  We also work very hard to develop good learning attitudes in our children, encouraging them to have a “can-do” attitude (a growth mindset), so that they are able to be effective learners with a strong work ethic.

Teachers’ medium term plans will show the specific subject knowledge covered and the areas of the national curriculum covered.  Information from these will be shared on the class pages of our website.

RE and PSHE are taught as part of our curriculum and we provide a daily act of collective worship as is required by all maintained schools in England.

At Broadgate we believe that reading well is one of the key factors in achieving academic success.  To ensure that our pupils become better readers and therefore better learners, we provide good quality teaching and encourage parents to read regularly with their children at home. Our core reading scheme is Oxford Reading Tree.

We teach a daily phonics session in Reception and Key Stage 1 so that pupils can learn to recognise and spell words using the letter sounds.  The phonics scheme we use is Read, Write, Inc.

In Key Stages 1 and 2, in addition to their daily English lesson, pupils benefit from a 30 minute guided reading session each morning.  We use a wide range of books from our own library and take full advantage of the School Library Service in order to widen our pupils' reading experience across the curriculum.

We seek to encourage a lifelong love of reading, both for learning and for pleasure.