Overview
Southwold Primary School ensures the learning children experience in school incorporates the national curriculum and government initiatives. To find out more about the national curriculum, follow the link below:
Our Southwold Curriculum
#EveryoneALearner
At Southwold Primary School, our whole school community accepts whole heartedly these statements:
- The undeniable and obvious goal of any leader, teacher or teaching assistant is to improve outcomes for every pupil.
- Pupils, in any class, learn because of what they do-the activities they positively engage in, the tasks they complete, the problems they solve and the relationships they build - as well as how learning is modelled.
- In any class setting, pupil learning experiences and processes are equally the result of the teacher's/teaching assistant's actions and the children's behaviour and attitudes: in the form of lessons, instructional approaches, interactions, activities, assessments and planning.
- Therefore, pupil success is largely a result of positive, collaboration of the whole school community.
Curriculum Intent
At Southwold, we believe that our curriculum is driven by 6 key golden threads that provide a framework for learning and help us deepen the children's understanding of what is being taught. These threads are big, transferable ideas that have a real meaning and help children make sense of the world around them. These threads can be revisited within and across year groups so that children can build upon their existing knowledge.
Diversity & Inclusion
We want to develop a culture of equality and diversity so that everyone feels proud of their identity and can participate fully in school life. We encourage children to be inquisitive and be the best they can be. At Southwold, we enjoy reflecting and celebrating families' cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity in our school. This can be seen in our curriculum, the way lessons are adapted, wall displays and achievements of all learners. We want Southwold to be a safe learning environment for everyone.
Our children are taught to question prejudice and bullying and support others to reach their full potential.
Children learn about the concepts of democracy and power throughout the school where we model this through our Pupil Leadership Team.
Our sports premium ensures all children have access to after school clubs and a range of sporting activities.
Values
Our intention is to ensure each child becomes the best citizen they can be by embracing and developing a shared set of values to prepare them for life in an ever-changing, modern world. We actively promote British values (Democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect, and tolerance of different faiths) through everything we do at Southwold and actively challenge views contrary to this. We want our children to respect each other's well-being and have strategies to help themselves as well as others in need.
Language Rich
Our curriculum is planned to include high quality texts and experiences that expose children to a rich and varied vocabulary whilst providing opportunities to regularly use in meaningful ways. We incorporate a range of pedagogical approaches for language development such as collaborative learning, children leading learning, and reciprocal teaching.
Knowledge & Skill Based
We follow a knowledge rich approach to planning, teaching, and learning. We regularly check the knowledge that children have retained and encourage them to reflect upon this through a wide range of questioning, experiences, and activities to support and challenge children at all levels.
Active Lifelong Learners
Our aim is to develop children into lifelong learners who are reflective, inquisitive, resilient, and independent. We want children to actively participate in their learning to keep them motivated and embed meaningful experiences to support long term retention. We use growth mindset throughout, to develop their learning power.
Community Cohesion
Southwold School is enthusiastic about tapping into our communities near and far. We want to enhance our children's learning experiences to demonstrate how skills learnt in school and from others can be used in their future careers and everyday life. We strongly believe in immersing our children into a variety of cultures, religions and national or local events to appreciate, take responsibility and respect everyone's individuality. We want children to gain widespread knowledge and experiences that will benefit them and may even inspire them to take part in a future adventure!
We actively encourage parents and our wider community to take part in our events.
All children leave our school with a sense of belonging where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections, and become good citizens.
Curriculum Implementation
With the National Curriculum as our starting point, we believe that our curriculum allows us to provide a range of opportunities for us to develop numeracy, language, vocabulary, writing and oracy experiences for all children, across the different subject areas.
Where possible, cross curricular links are established, however explicit teaching of other subjects using a variety of stimuli is adopted when strong, appropriate links cannot be made. Links between previous learning are made to support deeper understanding and to encourage children to apply their knowledge and make connections across the curriculum areas.
Learning is carefully sequenced with regular opportunities to revisit and build upon prior knowledge to ensure the needs of all children are met. We recognise that we are all on a journey of learning and our curriculum mirrors this; we build on learning from previous terms and the current term, as well as previous years, so that we can embed short and long term learning.
Curriculum Impact
We measure the impact of our curriculum through:
- Sampling children’s learning across the school to recognise progress and attainment and to celebrate success
- Pupil discussions with teachers, Curriculum Champions and Senior Leaders about their learning
- Regular pupil progress meetings with teachers, where high quality interaction and reflection supports next steps for all children, based upon the knowledge of the individual child
- Reflecting as a staff team on the standards achieved against the planned outcomes across the curriculum
- Celebrating learning at the end of each termly ‘enquiry question’, where children demonstrate what they know and what they are able to do more of
Long Term Plans
Curriculum Intent, Implementation and Impact Statements
Phonics
At Southwold Primary School we use the Little Wandle scheme for Phonics.
*In accordance with the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 section 71, parents have the right to withdraw their children from all or part of RE and acts of collective worship on religious grounds. Parents should make their wishes known to the Headteacher who will ensure that any pupils who are withdrawn are appropriately supervised while the act of collective worship / RE lesson takes place. Pupils can be withdrawn wholly or partly from acts of collective worship only by parents.
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