Curriculum
School Prospectus
The School Vision and Values is described in our prospectus. Please click here to listen to our school prospectus.
Curriculum Intent
We have designed a curriculum that is ambitious for all our pupils. It is planned and sequenced to ensure children gain knowledge and skill, year on year, in all national curriculum subjects (see below for our yearly timetable). Our curriculum is adapted, designed and developed to meet the needs of our community and those pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities. This has been achieved through collaborative work with parents, pupils and staff, enabling us to successfully identify gaps in learning which we then aim to fill. Our curriculum priorities are as follows:
1. Language
We prioritise early and secure literacy skills. Our curriculum design is centred around rich language development, oracy (expression through speech) and reading, because this is what our pupils need.
2. Long term memory: knowing more and remembering more
We place a high value on key concepts in each subject, concepts being a combination of new knowledge and skills. We have carefully ordered these concepts across a year group to enable links to be made between subjects but also to ensure that the learning is revised and progressive year after year.
(2021) Staff are undertaking a 2 year project on Cognitive Learning Theory and the application of this in the classroom. This we hope will improve our own understanding of how children's learn and the best approaches we can take to improve their capacity to take on new facts and skills both in the short and long term memory.
3. Positive mental health
Positive mental health is key because 'educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all' — Aristotle. SMSC (Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development) is a 'golden thread' that runs throughout the school. This is evident in PSHE teaching and learning and pastoral care. In addition, all lessons are designed to encourage collaborative problem-solving which develop our school values and provide challenge and ambition, as well as self-management and resilience.
And this is how we achieve it —
Curriculum Implementation
At Meadlands we deliver our vision through a curriculum which consists of the National Curriculum core and foundation subjects, taught through a relevant, contextual and inspiring programme. Subjects are taught discretely as we focus on skill and knowledge, developing expertise in all faculties.
We follow specialist schemes:
- The Barnardo’s PSHE PATHS programme — a rich resource designed to facilitate the development of self-control, emotional awareness and interpersonal problem-solving skills.
- The REAL PE scheme — sits alongside a focus on key sports and team-skills and the Richmond agreed syllabus for RE.
In addition, we offer an exciting enrichment programme for each year group which includes dance lessons with practitioners from Boundless Dance Company, yoga, LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), boxing, forest schools and music (with resident musicians, teachers and performances in local and national events and use of our bespoke Music Factory building). We have also designed regular visits to ensure learning is always first hand, with a wide range of extracurricular creative and physical opportunities.
The curriculum is highly organised which enables a whole school focus. For example, in the first week of the Autumn Term, all year groups will all be studying history for a block of time, followed by a block of Design and Technology. Please see below for the Year Group Curriculum Maps.
We have categorised our curriculum into 4 sections:
Core Subjects: Reading, Writing, Maths & Science
Culture & Communication: Humanities, Computing, RE & Spanish
PE & Wellbeing: PE, PSHE, ELSA & Outdoor Learning
The Arts: Music, Art, Design Technology & LAMDA
English and Maths
These are given the highest status in our curriculum to help learners to improve their learning and performance in education, work, and life. These are embedded in the school’s curriculum. You can read about our reading, writing and maths curriculum here.
Reading
English literacy is at the heart of our learning and teaching and essential to every area of the curriculum. It is through literacy that concepts are formed and we are able to make sense of the world and our place in it. Children are taught to read in a variety of ways. Each week children read individually and in groups during guided reading lessons; they are also given regular opportunities to share a book with others. Guided reading focuses on the skills of comprehension and critical appreciation. Teachers read a huge variety of written material regularly with the children: fiction and non-fiction, stories, reports, diaries, poems etc. We believe in the importance of exposing children to classic texts at all ages, but most importantly in upper Key Stage two. Our love of reading is show-cased in special events such as our half-termly competition Ready, Steady, Read! The Poetry Slam, LAMDA examinations and the subsequent event for parents A Night at The Meadlands’ Globe Theatre.
We have a home-school reading system (up to Year 6), which requests that children read for at least ten minutes each day.
Phonics
We place a strong emphasis on phonics (letter sounds) in the early years of learning to read as this lays the foundations for successful reading. At Meadlands, we use the resource Read Write Inc. Phonics learning starts in Nursery and continues throughout the school. Although explicitly taught in The Early Years and KS1, children are encouraged to use their phonics understanding in all year groups, as they read and write in all year groups and therefore are given daily opportunities to embed their phonics learning. This is aided by sound charts which are on display in all classrooms. Children remain with their class teacher for phonics learning who provides the appropriate level of challenge for each attainment group. Pupils also learn 'sight words' by repetition and retrieval.
Systematic Phonics Teaching
The teaching of phonics begins in Nursery and Reception, where sounds are introduced at a rate of one a day throughout the autumn and spring term. Sounds are consolidated in the summer term. This knowledge is built upon in Year 1; more complex sounds are introduced and reinforced throughout Year 2.
Phonics Screening
During the summer term in Year 1, children nationwide are tested on their phonic knowledge. This test helps us to identify children who have gaps in their phonic knowledge and who may need support in Year 2 to develop reading and writing skills. The test is very low-key and the children are not aware that they are being tested. Parents are informed as to whether their child has achieved the national expectation within the child’s end-of-year report. Additional individual and group tuition in phonics will be given to those children in years 1 and Year 2 who find reading difficult. Year 2 children will be tested again in the summer term.
Maths
We teach Maths by following the small steps of progression as guided by The White Rose scheme, an approach developed by The Maths Hub and the National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics. Fluency, Reasoning and Problem Solving are at the heart of the approach. It uses the Concrete Pictorial Abstract (CPA) approach​ to support children's learning and progression. A concrete approach refers to the physical resources that children can manipulate to support their learning, examples include clocks, place value counters and bead strings. A pictorial approach refers to the visual models that can be used to support the understanding of methods and concepts. Finally the abstract approach, is the written method that the progression of skills and knowledge works towards, an example of this is the written method of addition. By embedding this approach we are allowing pupils to spend enough time to fully explore a topic, reinforcing it with practice, before moving onto the next one. All ideas are built on previous knowledge and pupils have ample opportunity to develop relationships between topics.
Lessons typically are broken into four parts:
- Input Task – the entire class spends time on developing a new skill through the CPA approach
- Time is then given to the children to independently apply the skill through fluency activities
- The class come back together to assess the success of their learning, from which any child who has not mastered the concept is given additional small group support (the keep-up not catch-up) approach
- Those demonstrating a secure foundation will go on to be challenged through reasoning and problem solving activities
Key points:
- A highly effective approach to teaching maths based on research and evidence
- Builds students’ mathematical fluency without the need for rote learning
- Introduces new concepts using Bruner’s Concrete Pictorial Abstract (CPA) approach
- Pupils learn to think mathematically as opposed to reciting formulas they don’t understand
- Increased ability and speed through instant recall
- Supports pupils in creating their own mathematical generalisations and pattern seeking
We also use Times Tables Rockstars as a tool to help pupils develop fluency in multiplication tables.
Curriculum Surveys
Please see below the staff, parent and pupil curriculum surveys which were used to shape the decision on topics and trips.
Expectations for staff
We want the very best for our pupils. The staff worked together to create their own teaching standards, a description of the teaching and learning you will find in a Meadlands' classroom. Please refer to the document below.
