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Curriculum Overview
The school follows the national primary curriculum and the requirements for the early years. The school’s curriculum comprises all learning and other experiences that are planned for its pupils. The curriculum comprises the core subjects of:
- English
- Mathematics
- Science
and the foundation subjects:
- Art and design
- Computing
- Design and technology
- Languages
- Geography
- History
- Music
- Physical Education
- PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education)
- RSE (Relationships and Sex Education)
Raising standards at Alban Wood requires focus on what we do in the classroom. Continued and sustained improvement is dependent upon improving the quality of learning and teaching that is taking place on a daily basis. At Alban Wood, the expectation is that all pupils are provided with high quality learning experiences that lead to consistently high levels of pupil achievement. The curriculum is adapted, where necessary, to meet the needs of SEND pupils and to ensure equality of opportunity for all our pupils.
We expect every teacher to be a good teacher – no child deserves less.
By adopting a whole school approach to teaching and learning across the school, we aim:
- To provide consistency of teaching and learning across the school
- To enable teachers to teach as effectively as possible
- To promote British values
- To enable children to learn as well as possible
- To give children the skills they require to become more effective lifelong learners
- To provide an inclusive education for all children
- To learn from each other, through the adoption of a collaborative, enquiry based approach to teaching and learning, where good practice is shared
Thematic Approach
At Alban Wood we are continually striving to adapt, alter and amend the curriculum so that the pupils receive the best quality teaching and learning possible. This curriculum is set out in themes where the children will experience different themes a year. Each theme encompasses the different subjects and links the learning under one theme title. The children should become immersed in the learning of that theme and use and apply their knowledge learnt to many different aspects of the theme. This approach also gives the children the opportunity to further and deepen their understanding in the foundation subjects as well as the core subjects.
Subject Curriculum Overviews
Year Group Overviews
Writing (The Write Stuff)
The school uses a writing scheme called ‘The Write Stuff’. Below are the learning journeys for the units of work that are in the above English overview. This approach to the teaching of writing allows children to work with high quality, age-related texts as well as a range of genres. Each unit is made up of components: Sentence Stacking Lessons, Experience Days, Find the Shape Lessons and an Independent Writing Sequence. Children are exposed to ambitious vocabulary and given the tools to build these into coherent pieces of writing.
Maths
The following documents give further guidance for end of year Maths expectations
Spanish
At Alban Wood children in Key Stage 2 learn Spanish using Language Angels. This is in the form of both written and oral outcomes. Through Spanish teaching and learning we aim for our pupils to:
- understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
- speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation
- write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
- discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.
Religious Education
All schools are also required to teach religious education – Alban Wood follows the scheme of work set by Hertfordshire. Every state-funded school must offer a curriculum which is balanced and broadly based and which:
• promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society
• prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life and
• prepares pupils for life in modern day Britain, learning about British values.
British Values
The school takes opportunities to promote British Values, defined by the government as the following:
• democracy
• the rule of law
• individual liberty
• mutual respect
• tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs
In actively promoting British Values, we will also focus on, and be able to show how our work with pupils is effective in, embedding fundamental British values. Actively promoting also means challenging pupils, staff or parents expressing opinions contrary to fundamental British Values, including ‘extremist’ views.
Further curriculum information
This page provides a summary of our school’s curriculum, if you would like more information about the curriculum at Alban Wood please contact the school office.