Curriculum Statement
The curriculum is a framework within which learning and teaching takes place. All children at Moss Lane School have access to a broad and balanced curriculum, regardless of gender, race, religion, age or ability. We believe learning should be fun, relevant and motivating. We firmly believe in the importance of providing meaningful learning experiences. Our curriculum is effectively delivered through stimulating cross curricular topics that combine a range of subjects to make learning meaningful and enable children to make links between subjects.
We check the coverage of the National Curriculum against our topics to ensure children are taught the appropriate knowledge and skills for their year group. Our topics aim to bring the curriculum to life through hooks to engage the children and capture their attention as well as a meaningful purpose and context for learning.
Moss Lane School is a safe, inclusive, happy place where everybody strives to do their best in all that they do. We aim to develop each children from their starting point and grow into creative learners that aspire and achieve. We believe that there is no limit to what our children do and within school there is a strong sense of community/family and belonging, where everybody is welcome, cared for and valued. Our holistic, nurturing child centred approach provides a high quality of education for all, nurturing the children’s potential talents through high achievement and a love of learning.
We believe in hands on, lifelong learning, ensuring the children receive a broad, balanced, challenging and enjoyable education that provides continuity and progression, catering for all individual needs. Through our curriculum and teaching we aim to equip our children with the knowledge, skills and understanding necessary to achieve their full potential now and in the future.
Our curriculum comprises of lessons, experiences and activities which are planned to promote lifelong learning skills, personal growth and development. Fulfilling the formal requirements of the National Curriculum, whilst also taking into account both national and local themes relevant to the children’s lives. Children leave Moss Lane with the skills and knowledge that equips them for life beyond infant school, becoming rounded learners, ready to make a valued contribution in their new schools and in society.
Intent
What do we want children to learn?
At Moss Lane School, our curriculum is designed to be rich in meaningful first hand experiences and offering ample opportunity for early language development. We recognise the varied starting points of the children and the importance that early language and literacy has on them. Developing this skill allows them to access learning across the curriculum both in their early childhood and throughout their learning journey. Our curriculum is built on a strong commitment to wellbeing and the personal, social development of our young learners. It is designed to help them learn new skills whilst embedding knowledge.
We have developed a curriculum that is progressive both in skills and knowledge in all subjects’ which is then used to develop children’s understanding, attitudes and motivation for learning. We believe strongly in supporting children to develop key skills that prepare them for lifelong education, as well as competence in the core skills of maths, reading, writing and computing. Learning of new skills and knowledge is made available to children through a planned sequences of lessons which are differentiated, ensuring that the learning is as tailored and inclusive as possible.
We intend for our curriculum to:
- Promote a positive attitude towards learning, so that children enjoy coming to school and acquire a solid basis for lifelong learning
- Enable all children to learn and develop their skills to the best of their ability.
- Facilitate children’s acquisition of knowledge, skills and qualities which will help them to develop intellectually, emotionally, socially, physically and morally, so that they may become independent, responsible, adaptable, confident and considerate members of the community.
- Create and maintain an exciting and stimulating learning environment where all children are encouraged to be risk takers and develop creative thinking
- Develop a culture of enquiry.
- Develop children’s resilience in a happy and safe learning environment.
- Enable children to be positive citizens.
- Enable all children to have respect for themselves and high self-esteem, and to be able to live and work co-operatively with others.
- Encourage respect for the environment.
Implementation
How do we teach the curriculum for learning?
We pride ourselves on being an open, friendly and approachable school that encourages parents to be actively involved in their children’s learning. We understand the crucial role parents and carers have in promoting learning beyond the school gate and in ensuring children make the best possible progress and share next steps. All our children benefit from working with adults who know them well and offer regular opportunities to discuss their learning, set targets/ goals and agree next steps. Support is provided as necessary to remove barriers to learning so that our children can achieve success. As well as parent/carers meetings, we host regular events to inform parents/carers as to how best they can support their children with their education.
Over the week the children at Moss Lane explore a range of subject areas; always including daily Maths and English lessons. Some block teaching of Science or topic work has a positive impact on embedding skills.
Through well planned play opportunities, children in the early years begin their education at Moss Lane positively. Practitioners work alongside children following their interest to provide effective daily experiences to cover their statutory framework and to move learning forward at every opportunity.
A wide range of teaching strategies are implemented by all staff based on the assessment of children’s learning. Opportunities to feedback to children enables immediate responses to set next steps and to continuously move learning on. A high quality first teaching approach combined with a blend of targeted teaching and continuous provision, ensure that children receive deep learning experiences.
Our varied school life includes a range of wow days, clubs, workshops, visitors, activities and projects which offer a wide range of opportunities for personal achievement. We strongly believe that outdoor education is a way to stay healthy and appreciate the beauty of the environment around us and use woodland school/allotment to support us with this. The ethos of the school actively encourages children to pursue various roles of responsibility and leadership for example: school and eco council members, reading buddies and wellbeing mentors.
Our Senior Leadership Team (SLT) work closely with Subject Leaders to ensure that the highest standards for each subject are achieved and continuous professional development prioritises the securing of teachers’ subject knowledge and pedagogy. Subject specific learning and vocabulary (both skills-based and topic-based) is shared with the children throughout the topics ensuring they develop their understanding of each curriculum subject as well as understanding the purpose of skills in a real-life context.
Impact
How do we know how much the children have learned?
Children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and they learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships. Creating a love of learning through an exciting, child led curriculum has to go hand in hand with outstanding levels of progress and, ultimately, raised attainment. We believe that we achieve this through dedicated guided group teaching and an expectation that each child will independently apply this learning. The success of our curriculum is measured through regular monitoring of the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding by class, subject leaders and SLT using observations and outcomes of children’s work. Coverage, pitch, progression and assessment are integral to this monitoring and determine how well our children are achieving. Subject Leaders are equipped by SLT to carry out internal research to gain a thorough understanding of the standards in their subject. Children are happy to talk about their learning and say what they are getting better at and we measure the progress and attainment of all groups of children. Our results reflect this high achievement. We use observations to identify how children approach their learning, providing verbal feedback and rewarding their successes with praise.
- Collective worship (often known as an assembly) is part of pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
- Assemblies are an important part of our school community life, so we hope that all pupils participate. Any parents or carers wishing to exercise their right to withdraw their child(ren) from all or part of collective worship should consult the headteacher.
