Luckwell Primary School

Our Curriculum

At Luckwell Primary School we follow the objectives from the National Curriculum 2014. Using the knowledge we have of our families and the local community we serve, we have designed our curriculum to inspire, engage, enthuse and raise standards for all children. We aim to provide opportunities for personal and academic development where children make links between prior learning and new learning.

Early Years Foundation Stage

Early childhood is the foundation on which children build the rest of their lives. At Luckwell Primary School, we greatly value the important role that the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) plays in laying secure foundations for future learning and development.

We aim to provide a safe, challenging, stimulating, caring and sharing environment which is sensitive to the needs of the child, including children with additional needs. We provide a broad, balanced, relevant and creative curriculum that will enable each child to develop personally, socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically, creatively and intellectually to his/her full potential. Children have opportunities to learn through planned, purposeful play in all areas of learning and development and we use and value what each child can do, assessing their individual needs and helping each child to progress. We enable choice and decision-making, fostering independence and self-confidence and work in partnership with parents/carers and value their contributions. We aim to ensure that all children, irrespective of ethnicity, culture, religion, home language, family background, learning difficulties, disabilities, gender or ability, have the opportunity to experience a challenging and enjoyable programme of learning and development.

Phonics and Early Reading

We use the Unlocking Letters and Sounds phonics programme.

We begin teaching phonics in the first few weeks of term 1 in Reception and children make rapid progress in their reading journey. Children begin to learn the main sounds heard in the English Language and how they can be represented, as well as learning ‘Common Exception’ words for Phases 2, 3 and 4. They use these sounds to read and write simple words, captions and sentences. Children leave Reception being able to apply the phonemes taught within Phase 2, 3 and 4.

In Year 1 through Phase 5a, b and c, they learn any alternative spellings and pronunciations for the graphemes and additional Common Exception Words. By the end of Year 1 children will have mastered using phonics to decode and blend when reading and segment when spelling. In Year 1 all children are screened using the national Phonics Screening Check.

In Year 2, phonics continues to be revisited to ensure mastery of the phonetic code and any child who does not meet age related expectations will continue to receive support to close identified gaps.

For further details please see our Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression document below.
To ensure no child is left behind at any point in the progression, children are regularly assessed and supported to keep up through bespoke 1-1 interventions. These include GPC recognition and blending and segmenting interventions. The lowest attaining 20% of pupils are closely monitored to ensure these interventions have an impact.

We promote a 'phonics first' approach and in both our guided reading sessions at school and in the books, children take home, texts are very closely matched to a child's current phonics knowledge so that every child can experience real success in their reading. In these crucial early stages of reading we primarily use books from Ransom Reading Stars Phonics to ensure complete fidelity to the Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression we follow.

Reading

Reading is at the heart of the Luckwell curriculum. In EYFS and Year 1, considerable time is given to the teaching of systematic phonics through whole-class direct teaching, small group guided sessions and a wide variety of spoken language and play activities. We are well resourced with a wide range of engaging, fully decodable phonics sets and greater depth/enrichment books to add further interest and variety or the child’s reading experience.

As children progress through school, teacher assessment informs a carefully planned program of whole-class direct teaching and guided group sessions based around high quality texts.

We encourage all children to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction and to develop their knowledge of themselves, the world in which they live, establish an appreciation and love of reading and gain knowledge across the curriculum.

We follow the pedagogy of ‘Reading Reconsidered’ which offers strategies to support the development of rigorous and explicit reading sessions in the classroom. In using this, we ensure children at Luckwell will develop:

fluency
an understanding of inference through implicit and explicit vocabulary
comprehension and,
become accountable, independent readers

Our Literature Spine has been developed with reference to “The Five Plagues of the Developing Reader” by Doug Lemov: to give readers at Luckwell, access to a range of texts which help them navigate reading with confidence.

Writing

At Luckwell Primary School, our curriculum ensures that all children have opportunities to write for different purposes. We encourage writing through all curriculum areas and use quality reading texts to model examples of this. We believe that children require high quality speaking and listening activities and role-play session to provide them with the imagination and experiences that will equip them to become confident ‘authors and poets’.

As a school, we have adopted ‘Pathways to Write’ (P2W) by The Literacy Company to bring clarity to the mechanics of writing.

‘P2W’ is a whole school writing programme built around units of work which develop vocabulary, reading and writing. It links high-quality texts to writing to ensure an engaging and purposeful English lesson.

A writing session at Luckwell Primary will:

Have stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up the context for the session.

A modelling segment where the teacher models the learning outcome for the session, and,

A ‘doing’ section where the children demonstrate their understanding of the learning outcome.

Our writing overview can be found here: Luckwell Overview Year 2 Example sessions

In EYFS, our children are encouraged to develop their emergent writing through mark making with letter formation practised on a regular basis. Children are taught how to form a comfortable pencil grip and are given opportunities to practise their writing through richly organised play-based activities.

In Key Stages One and Two, a range of genres are modelled through ‘Pathways to Write’. The children are given opportunities to write for a range of purposes with grammar and punctuation activities taught as both part of a P2W session and in discreet sessions using ‘No Nonsense Grammar’ in line with the National Curriculum.

Spelling

From Y2 to Y6 children follow ‘No Nonsense Spelling’ to learn spelling rules and patterns.

Spelling sessions at Luckwell may include:

An introduction to, and learning of, the spelling rule/pattern for the week.

A dictation, handwriting or transcription activity relating to the weekly rule/pattern.

Spellings games- word pyramids, writing vowels and consonants in different colours, creating acrostic poems and so on.

Cloze procedure sentences which may also include words from previous weeks, and,

A spelling assessments focussed on the rule/pattern being learned that week.

In KS2, children will also have termly spellings linked to the National Curriculum Statutory spelling lists in line with the National Curriculum.

Maths

At Luckwell Primary School, we have implemented the Can Do Maths programme. Mathematics is an important creative discipline that helps us understand and change the World. We want all pupils to experience the power and enjoyment of mathematics and develop a sense of curiosity about the subject.

Here at Luckwell Primary School, we foster positive ‘can do’ attitudes, believe all children can achieve in mathematics, and teach for secure and deep understanding of mathematical concepts. We use mistakes and misconceptions as an essential part of learning and provide challenge through a variety of mathematical problems before acceleration through new content.

We aim for all pupils to:

Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics (see Year by Year Curriculum Road maps) so that they develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.

Solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of problems with increasing sophistication, including in unfamiliar contexts and to model real-life scenarios.

Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry and develop and present a justification, argument or proof using mathematical language.

Have an appreciation of number and number operations, which enables mental calculations and written procedures to be performed efficiently, fluently and accurately.

Science

At Luckwell Primary School we recognise the importance of Science in every aspect of daily life. Our Science curriculum aims to give all children a strong understanding of the world around them whilst acquiring specific skills and knowledge to help them to think scientifically, gain an understanding of scientific processes and an understanding of the uses and implications of Science, today and for the future.

As one of the three core subjects taught in Primary Schools, Luckwell gives the teaching and learning of Science the prominence it requires. The children are exposed to a wide variety of topics which fall under the three main disciplines of: biology, chemistry and physics.

The biological thread of plants, animals and humans runs across all year groups; building and developing children’s understanding as they move through the school. This begins with identification of animals and their habitats, and progresses to food chains, life cycles and environmental impacts upon the natural world. Children are also taught in detail about the human body, its processes and how it functions.

The chemistry and physics units cover a broad spectrum of topics including space, forces, state of matter, light and electricity among others. The children at Luckwell will make meaningful links across Science and, where appropriate, other areas of the curriculum, for example: the study of our local area, geography, D.T and PSHE.

Geography

At Luckwell we provide all children with a high-quality geography education that we hope ignites a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Teaching geography equips all children with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. As our children progress, their growing knowledge about the world should help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments. Geographical knowledge, understanding and skills provide the frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.

History

A high-quality history education, where key events and concepts are taught in chronological order, will help all children at Luckwell gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It inspires all children’s curiosity to know more about the past. All children will learn to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps children to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.

With each theme comes the opportunity to look at changes within the locality of the school: immediate community and wider such as. Part of the History curriculum works closely alongside Geography (locality study) and to look at changes in the local area.

Art and Design

At Luckwell, our high-quality art and design education engages, inspires and challenges pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design. As pupils progress, they are able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design. They also know how art and design both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation.

Design and Technology

At Luckwell, we want all children to develop an emotional understanding of the world around them, experience the richness of diversity in society and become resilient and resourceful in their own work. We encourage all children to engage in design and technology experiences and express themselves and value everyone’s contributions to the world of design and technology.

Physical Education

At Luckwell Primary School, we use the scheme Get Set 4 PE, which covers all Fundamental Movement Skills and offers all children opportunities to try a wide range of sports throughout their time at school. PE is taught twice a week by class teachers, so each class covers two units per term. The Robins Foundation sometimes support our teaching of PE, shared out between the classes throughout the year for a term at a time.

We want our children to become physically confident in a way which supports their health and fitness. Through our PE provision, children will be inspired to succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically-demanding activities. Our whole-class lessons and the Robins Foundation interventions strive to build character and help to embed values such as fairness and respect through physical activity.

PSHE

At Luckwell, we use a scheme called JIGSAW. This scheme brings together PSHE, emotional literacy, social skills and spiritual development in a comprehensive scheme of learning. A lesson a week helps teachers to focus on tailoring the lessons to their children’s needs and to enjoy building the relationship with their class, getting to know them better as unique human beings.