Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.
Francis Bacon
Intent
Our Smile Learn Excel Curriculum aims to give our children the knowledge, skills and understanding to achieve to their full potential academically, socially and emotionally. This takes place in the context of a safe and nurturing school environment where each individual child is known, and each individual child’s learning journey is unique to them.
We aim to give the children the children the necessary skills to prepare them for life in modern British society. As a truly inclusive primary school our curriculum reflects both the context of the school and the experiences of the children. This enables the children to be aspirational, to fulfil their potential and reach the highest of expectations that we have of them. We want all our pupils to Smile Learn and Excel in everything they do.
Implementation
Our knowledge rich curriculum is carefully planned to be sequential and allows plenty of opportunity for all children to feel confident with their retrieval of knowledge and understanding to apply to other areas of their learning. Our approach to delivering a creative curriculum ensures that we fully implement the National Curriculum.
We follow a knowledge rich approach to learning in the belief that children's natural curiosity should be encouraged to allow them to learn best when logical connections are made between different aspects of their learning. We encourage project work and research-based learning to encourage the children to have inquiring minds, to take ownership of their own learning, fostering independence and developing resilience.
At Shortlanesend we believe that learning is an active collaboration between home and school. In addition to regular homework such as reading, spelling, handwriting and learning number facts (tables and number bonds) we encourage parents to become involved in project work and topics.
The children at Shortlanesend are taught in 3 key stages – the Early Years Foundation stage, Key Stage 1 and Key stage 2. In the Foundation Stage the children follow the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum and in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 the children follow the National Curriculum.
Impact
Our priority is to enable the children to succeed in the 21st century by providing a rich, relevant and exciting curriculum. In doing so the children will develop a lifelong love of learning. Reading for information and pleasure, writing for different purposes, being able to applying their maths skills to real life situations, being able to explain, analyse and persuade in a range of areas of knowledge is at the heart of what we do.
