Curriculum

General

The Foundation Curriculum is taught in the Nursery (Foundation 1) and Reception (Foundation 2). There are six areas of learning in the early years:

Children in Y1 and Y2 are taught the Key Stage 1 National Curriculum. Children in Y3, Y4, Y5 and Y6 are taught the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum.

All schools are required to provide children with access to learning, enhancing their knowledge and skills in:

The Core subjects - English, Mathematics, Science, Information and Communication Technology and Religious Education.

The Non- core subjects - Design and Technology, History, Geography, Art, Music and Physical Education.

Great emphasis is placed on the teaching of basic skills. The school teaches English using the National Literacy Strategy techniques and Maths using the National Numeracy Strategy. Children are set targets by teachers and the children are encouraged to set their own targets.

Children work towards the attainment targets which are in the National Curriculum documents. A series of carefully designed topics for the whole school allows coverage of all the appropriate elements of the National curriculum as well as other important dimensions of Primary Education, such as Environmental Education, Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE), Citizenship, Drama and Religious Education. In this way, although an emphasis is given to basic skills, personal and social education is also possible.

Several different humanity topics are covered by each class during each year. Topics are generally planned in half-termly blocks. Some topics may have a particular subject emphasis.

A child may work alone, as part of a group or a class or even as a year group member. Targeted Y6 pupils are offered extra classes after school in the run-up to their end of key stage assessments. Parents are invited to school for briefing sessions.

What are learning walls?

Whilst you have been in Beck you may have noticed our lovely displays in and around the classroom. These areas are specifically to aid your child’s learning and will concentrate on the specific topics your child is studying. Each class follows a similar theme with a Numeracy, Literacy and Science learning wall and these are built upon each year. This is to help scaffold your child’s learning and give them suitable and valuable support whilst also allowing for progression.

Related vocabulary is also introduced and used on these walls, children can then use this in their own work.

VCOP

You might hear your child talk about using VCOP within school. This is a strategy used to aid their written work. This model is used throughout school but becomes more detailed as your child moves up through the key stage. Examples of the VCOP learning walls are shown below

VCOP F2

An example of VCOP in F2

VCOP Y1

VCOP in Y1

VCOP Y2

VCOP Y2

Punctuation Pyramid

Punctuation pyramid

What does the ‘V’ stand for?

V is for vocabulary. This is about encouraging children to make their writing more interesting to the reader by including description and detail. Ambitious vocabulary is always encouraged but specifically so when it is ‘Big Writing Day’ This is where parents are involved in helping their child to think of an ambitious word related to the topic they are studying. Children are much more likely to progress if they use strong vocabulary in their writing. The learning wall will often have examples of vocabulary that children can select and use in their writing. Please help your child by filling in their ambitious word on a slip to return to school during ‘Big writing’.

What about ‘C’?

C is for connectives- the words that can join two trains of thought together to extend the sentence. These begin with simple connectives such as ‘and’ ’because’ and ‘so’ and develop further up school to include ‘while’ ‘however’ and ‘although’ for example. Encouraging your child to use connectives from an early age will help them to improve their writing, SATs scores etc and ensure they are confident in extending their writing.

What does the ‘O’ mean?

O is for openers- sentence openers. These often add extra bits to the sentence and offer more explanation. E.g. ‘I went to the shops’ can be extended by the opener ‘Late yesterday evening I went to the shop’. Look at the VCOP in your child’s classroom to see examples they can use and encourage them to add them to their own sentences. As your child progresses through school the openers will become more complex and detailed- to aid your child further in improving their writing.

And what is the ‘P’?

P is for punctuation. Capital letters, full stops, exclamation marks, question marks etc. It is about encouraging children to check their own work for errors to ensure that what they are handing in is really a finished product- free from errors. Many children still forget capital letters and full stops even in y6 so drawing their attention to it as early as possible in F2/Y1 will hopefully stamp out the problem early on. You can check this at home easily with any piece of writing. Have a go at removing capital letters and full stops from a piece of writing and see if your child can add them back in successfully. For older children try removing other punctuation e.g. question marks, commas, and exclamation marks and see if they can put them in the correct place. Alternatively add the wrong type of punctuation and see if your child can replace t with the correct one.