'Education is the most powerful weapon with to change the world'
Nelson Mandela
The Beech Street Curriculum Intent
At Beech Street we aim to offer a curriculum which suits the needs of our children and families. We focus firstly on ensuring our curriculum is both engaging and relevant to the lives of our children. We aim to instil our School Values of: Tolerance, Respect, Ambition, Courage and Kindness throughout everything we do. We want our children to grow up to have a positive impact on the world and people around them.
We place a huge emphasis on Reading and Phonics at Beech Street to allow our children to become young independent learners. Books play a vital role in our school and the children talk about them on a daily basis. They love our Jungle Library, our Outdoor Reading Shed, Barry the Book Barrow and Bertha the Book machine. Our 5-a-day promise in Nursery and Reception, helps our children to develop a deep love of books at an early age. Whilst our '25 books to read' in Key Stage 1 & 2 ensure our children access a wide variety of authors, genres and both new and classic texts.
Our literacy teaching follows the Pathways to Write Approach. This Mastery Writing approach promotes the importance of immersing our children in well chosen stories to build vocabulary and develop a deep understanding of the content. With lots of modelling, speaking and listening and structure, our children are empowered to become confident expressive writers.
We follow White Rose Maths to give our children a mastery approach to maths from an early age and supplement this with a range of online activities which the children love. As part of our daily maths diet, we teach children economic awareness skills which we feel are crucial to help our children have a good understanding of money by the time they leave us for high school.
We have selected to to use the THRIVE approach to empower our children to develop their emotional intelligence. Through weekly sessions, our children build an emotional tool box to help them deal with any difficult situations they encounter in their lives.
As the children get older, their skills and knowledge will grow to help them develop a good understanding of their place in the world and in history. Through the mediums of sport, the arts and a wide variety of experiences, our children will leave Beech Street well equipped to help make our world a better place.
Each subject at Beech street is strategically planned to help our children develop their skills and knowledge in all areas of the curriculum. Each framework is progressive allowing the children to build upon secure foundation as they progress through school. For more information on any of these subject simply click the link. If you would like to know more about any specific subject please speak with your class teacher.
Legal Requirements
The core of our curriculum is based around the guidance issued by the Department of Education (DfE) in the following two documents:
The Early Years Framework (2014) - Nursery and Reception
The National Curriculum (2014) – Year 1 to Year 6
Whilst the above two documents are statutory we are free to supplement this with any other knowledge and skills that we feel are relevant to our pupils.
These documents below summarise the requirements of the National Curriculum by Year Group:-
Visits and Visitors
All members of our school recognise the importance of high quality learning experiences. If relevant, staff will arrange a variety of visits, visitors or other experiences throughout the year. Experiences such as these do come at a cost which is why the governors and I allocate funds to substantially reduce or remove any costs to parents. Parents and pupils tell us how much they appreciate these creative experiences and how much they believe it contributes to their child’s engagement and enjoyment of our curriculum.
Outdoor Curriculum
Our school is also committed to developing our outdoor spaces to take ‘learning outside the classroom’, but within the school grounds. We are constantly updating our playground and areas to ensure they can enhance our curriculum.
Support For Parents
Our staff will report regularly to parents giving them an indication of how their child is progressing against the expectations of the National Curriculum and their own personal targets. A written report is provided at the end of the Summer Term. Parents are also welcome to make an appointment to see a member of staff at any time throughout the year, by appointment.
Should you require further information, please contact us – our curriculum leaders will be happy to talk in more detail. Alternatively, visit the DfE website for a full list of learning objectives and curriculum requirements
