Intent is about our staff knowing what we want our children to learn.
At Cromford School our curriculum intent is to provide a rich and varied curriculum which allows children to develop their skills and abilities to their full potential. We aim to ensure high standards in all subjects, especially reading, broaden children’s knowledge across all subjects, disciplines, and provide effective support for Social and Emotional mental health in our more vulnerable pupils.
Implementation is about staff knowing how we want to deliver that learning.
Using the National Curriculum as a minimum expectation, teachers and leaders have sequenced learning in individual subjects over the primary age range, so that knowledge builds incrementally about people, places, concepts and ideas. Alongside this, skills progression in different subjects is carefully taught and linked to this knowledge, so that skills development (knowing 'how to') is related to what has been learned within subject areas. Progress in learning is defined as knowing more and remembering more, and this is tested regularly to ensure that key concepts - identified by staff as the most important - stick in children's memory.
| We want our pupils to know more, to remember more and to do more. |
Our curriculum follows a 2 or 3 year rolling programme depending on the year groups. Teachers link some subjects together under a common theme, and some subjects are taught discretely. We are basing our planning for English, Science, History and Geography on the Focus Education programme to help make links in the learning for pupils. However, although themes may link subjects together, each subject discipline is defined when being taught so that children are clear that they are in a History, rather than themed or topic lesson. Teachers use the 2014 National Curriculum programmes of study as the main source for planning a topic. These are also used to plan for the progression of skills throughout the school.
The English curriculum also follows a rolling programme for texts to ensure that the range of genres, as specified in the national curriculum, is covered effectively. Reading is taught from Foundation Stage through to year 6 using individual and guided reading, as well as focussed comprehension lessons. Daily phonics and spelling sessions are delivered in the Infant class, where we follow The Teach Hub Synthetic Phonics scheme. Junior pupils either following a spelling scheme based on Jane Considine, or they take part in catch up phonics groups. Our reading scheme is organised into coloured bands which match the phonics phases using decodable texts including Letters and Sounds decodable readers and Dandelion Readers. Once pupils are reading beyond Phase 6 of phonics, they move to age appropriate books which retain the bandings. Teachers read to children each day and we are basing our choice of class reading books on a reading spine approach.
We teach our English using a mix of ‘Focus Education’ and ‘Literacy Curriculum’ resources across school.
Our Maths curriculum is based on the White Rose scheme using a mastery approach which is based on year group expectations. Children are taught using a mixture of fluency (basic skills, using number), reasoning and problem solving (manipulating number and applying their fluency skills).
As a Church of England school, our Collective Worship is an important aspect of our day.
RE lessons follow the Derbyshire Agreed Syllabus which covers national requirements; two thirds of the curriculum is based on Christianity and the remainder looks at a range of different religions. Our main resource for RE is ‘Understanding Christianity’.
Children are taught PE twice weekly and learn a range of skills and games. Once a week, delivery of PE is from an external coach which provides children with opportunities to experience a variety of sports. After school and lunchtime activities enrich our curriculum and there is a varied programme of sports covered. We also participate in local cluster events, including cross country, dance and Kwik Cricket. All children have swimming lessons during the year.
We have a visiting specialist music teacher who teaches our year 5 and 6 pupils brass through the Wider Opportunities scheme. In addition we also have peripatetic piano and cello teachers.
We enrich our curriculum with a wide range of after school activities, visits and visitors. Our after school club provides sports, crafts and forest schools. In addition we welcome a wide variety of visitors into school including local clergy, knitting group and playgroup.
We have developed good links with Cromford Mill and take part in events there. We are a central part of the village ‘Celebrating Cromford festival'. We have worked with local performing arts group ‘Baby people’ with workshops on Caribbean carnival music and drumming.
We closely tailor our curriculum to the needs of the pupils entering the school and moving on to secondary schools, through strong liaison with our local Secondary School Anthony Gell.
The school leadership is part of the Cluster of Gell Schools to improve communication and transition for pupils. Pupils from school are also members of the cluster parliament.
Impact defines what our children have achieved and measures how effective this has been.
- From their respective starting points, all groups of pupils make progress and achieve broadly in line with national
- Due to smaller cohorts, progress is varied across the years.
- Our focus on Disadvantaged pupils allows us to employ additional staff to support learning. It also allow us to subside educational visits (such as a residential or visit to hear an orchestra).
- National assessments and examinations show that our pupils are broadly in line with national expectations.
- We have good links with our local Secondary School and regularly take part in sporting events. In addition, the upper Junior pupils go to watch the drama productions. The Secondary School provide a number of opportunities for transition visits, which enable us to prepare the pupils for the next stage of their education. All groups of pupils are well prepared for their next stage.
- Pupils with SEND achieve well in school. Our SENDCo ensures a detailed provision map is in place and that interventions and support are carefully matched to individual needs.
- The pupils read a good variety of texts. Teachers carefully monitor the texts chosen to ensure a range of genres are being studied. We have recently changed our guided reading in KS2 and now include more focus on a whole class text, which the children are enjoying. They are also acquiring a range of new vocabulary though studying more challenging texts together.
- Pupils’ work over time shows good progress. This is seen through lesson observations and book scrutiny.
- Mathematical knowledge, concepts and procedures are applied with increasing confidence. We previously identified this as an area for improvement and have changed our teaching of mathematics to reflect this – we now focus on block teaching of new concepts.