Our curriculum - what your child is learning
At Slip End Village School, we firmly believe that our over-arching aim is to prepare our children to be successful in the next stage of their education - academically, socially and emotionally. Through our curriculum and wider experiences, we aspire to enable our children to become confident and curious learners and to develop and practise learning skills and coping strategies that will stay with them for life.
The curriculum is what we teach. The information your will find through the links below will provide an insight as to what learning looks like at our school. Much of our curriculum is based on the Chris Quigley Essential curriculum. Alongside this, we follow other schemes of work for certain subjects such as White Rose maths and Herts for Learning units of work. These are adapted and built upon to meet the needs of each cohort and to create a broad and balanced, sequential curriculum.
Curriculum intent
We believe that our curriculum should challenge and inspire pupils, encouraging them to look beyond their immediate environment. We want to promote a love of learning and believe that practice, resilience and patience will bring success and build confidence. Curiosity, creativity and empathy will be nurtured and valued. Developing these traits in our pupils will assist them in finding a happier path through an increasingly complex world.
Early Years
We firmly believe that early child development sets the foundation for lifelong learning and behaviour: early experiences are important in shaping how successful children are later in life.
Our youngest pupils, in Nursery and Reception, follow the revised 2021 Early Years Framework which can be accessed by following this link. This is divided into 7 areas of learning:
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
We have interwoven the Early years Framework with the Chris Quigley curriculum to enable a fluid transition for our children into Year 1. Children are taught through a creative, thematic approach and are encouraged to participate in their learning by offering suggestions for themes and topics. Assessment takes place on Tapestry, to which both Early Years staff and parents contribute in order for us to gain a holistic perspective of the development of each child.
Phonics
Phonics is taught through the FFT 'Success for all' Phonics Scheme. This is a scheme that has been validated by the Department for Education. This scheme is split into six phases. In Nursery, children learn about sound discrimination, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, oral blending and segmenting as they begin Phase 1. Children will continue to progress through the phases of learning in Reception and Year 1, consolidating their learning by reaching Phase 6 in the summer term of Year 1. Phonics sessions are structured, fast-paced, multi-sensory and highly enjoyable.
Our children are provided with multiple opportunities during the school day to apply their phonic knowledge. Our reading scheme books are matched to their current reading attainment level and are those from the FFT phonics scheme.
Key Stages 1 and 2
In Key Stages 1 and 2, we follow the Chris Quigley Essentials curriculum, details of which can be found here. This fulfils the requirements of the National Curriculum 2014 and extends beyond, ensuring that our children are able to have both breadth and depth of learning.
The subjects covered include:
- Core Subjects - English, Mathematics, Science and Computing
- Foundation Subjects – History, Geography, French, Design Technology, Art, Music and P.E.
For Religious Education (RE), SACRE - the agreed syllabus for Central Bedfordshire, Luton and Bedford - is followed.
Our curriculum by subject:
The links below take you to our Curriculum Summaries - these show you what each subject looks like at our school. Our curriculum is the same across our federation, therefore the documents also apply to Slip End Village School.
The Curriculum Summaries outline the following:
- Our aims for each subject (intent)
- What it looks like and how it is taught, including any particular teaching strategies or programmes used (implementation)
- What assessment looks like for that subject and how the school measures and monitors that subject (impact)
PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic education)
MFL (Modern Foreign Languages)
Long term plans (by subject):
The links below take you to the long term plans for each subject. These outline the units of work for each year group across the academic year.
Our curriculum by year group:
Our Curriculum Overviews outline what your child will be learning across all subjects, each term
Spring Term 2022 - 2023
Autumn Term 2022- 2023
British Values
At Slip End Village School we take very seriously our responsibility to prepare children for life in modern Britain. We ensure that the fundamental British Values are introduced, discussed and lived out through the ethos and work of the school. All curriculum areas provide a vehicle for furthering understanding of these concepts and, in particular, our RE and PSHCE lessons provide excellent opportunities to deepen and develop understanding. Children embrace these concepts with enthusiasm and demonstrate a good understanding of their application to their own lives.
Relationships and Sex Education
As part of your child’s education at Slip End Village School, we promote personal wellbeing and development through our Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) lessons. PSHE is the curriculum subject that gives children the knowledge, understanding, attitudes and practical skills to live safe, healthy, productive lives and meet their full potential. The school has a statutory duty to provide lessons that focus on the body, personal hygiene and how our bodies change. In Science, we also have a statutory duty to teach life processes for humans and animals.
To deliver a successful programme it is vital that we work with parents to teach this content and parental consultation has played a key part in decisions that we have made. We have chosen the Twinkl scheme of work to act as our foundation for our RSE (Relationships and Sex Education) lessons. However, we always adapt resources like this in order to best represent the needs of each class and child.
Please find below access to all our teaching resources that form the foundation for our lessons - RSE is taught as a unit of learning in Years 2, 5 and 6.
To find out more:
If you would like to find out more about our school's curriculum, please contact us by email: office@slipendschool.org or speak to your child's class teacher.