Our Approach to Learning
Morgan’s Vale and Woodfalls CE Primary School seeks to prepare its pupils to be productive members of society. To have the skills and knowledge they need to be prepared for the next stage of their education as they leave us to go to Secondary School and beyond. To have a sense of wonder, appreciation and inquisitiveness about the world around them. To be able to work and learn, give and receive and be kind and considerate with the people around them. To be happy, content and confident in the person they are and adventurous for the person they can become.
From our Curriculum Policy (which can be found here), the intent of our School’s currriculum is to:
- Cater for the needs of individual children of both sexes from all ethnic and social groups, including the most able and those who are experiencing learning difficulties
- Facilitate children's acquisition of knowledge, skills and qualities which will help them to develop intellectually, emotionally, socially, physically, spiritually, morally and aesthetically, so that they may become independent, responsible, productive, thoughtful, confident and considerate members of the community
- Create and maintain an exciting and stimulating learning environment
- Ensure that each child's education has continuity and progression
- Ensure that there is a match between the child and the tasks s/he is asked to perform
- Provide a broad and balanced curriculum
- Provide a wide range of educational experiences through the use of outside spaces, school trips and residentials, visitors and topic days organised within classes, key stages and as a whole school making the most of the unique geography and community in which the school is situated
- Recognise the crucial role which parents play in their children's education and make every effort to encourage parental involvement in the educational process
- Treat children in a dignified way
Our curriculum is based on the National Curriculum. We teach numeracy and literacy in the morning and all other subjects in the afternoons either as part of our termly topics or as stand-alone subjects.
In literacy our children learn to read and write using Oxford University Press’ Read Write Inc phonics scheme. We have invested heavily in the materials and training to ensure our staff and children enjoy using this resource and as a result our Reading results in KS1 and Phonics screening results in Year 1 are excellent. Children are placed in small groups and regularly assessed to ensure they are in the right group to support and challenge them. As a result most children will complete the scheme and be fluent readers by the end of Year 1. Literacy for children in Year 2-6 is based upon Oxford University Press’ Literacy and Language scheme which dovetails with Read Write Inc ensuring consistency and continuity. Children also learn to write for longer periods of time during ‘Big Writes’ which builds stamina in writing and develops their own ‘voice’ as a writer.
In numeracy our staff use Big Maths by Andrell Education to organise our maths into core and outer maths. Children from Year 1-6 start with the first 30 minutes of their maths lessons in small groups, of typically 10 children, rehearsing and extending their core arithmetic skills before heading back to class to cover the outer maths which includes concepts such as shape and time. Again groups are regularly assessed to ensure the correct level of support and challenge which ensures progress is rapid which can also be seen in our maths results at KS1 and KS2. Children also do weekly maths challenges to see if they can get their ‘best ever score’ which is celebrated in our Well Done collective worship on a Friday.
In both literacy and numeracy the regular assessments ensure children receive targeted short bursts of extra support to help the keep up if thought helpful rather than having to catch up after they have fallen behind.
Our staff are very talented in planning imaginative and exciting topics that provide a theme for learning in the afternoons. This will often pull subjects such as History, Geography, Science, Art and Design and Technology together in a coherent way that is helpful in creating links between learning for the children. Where a topic does not fit a subject this will be taught discretely and ensures the children enjoy a hugely broad curriculum that includes two hours of PE, RE, Music, Computing and a modern foreign language (usually French). All classes have Forest Schools sessions in their timetable, for EY and KS1 this is weekly, for KS2 this is on a termly rotation. All children will enjoy a school trip that goes with their topic (there are six topics in a year) or a topic themed day which may involve dressing up and /or buying in specialists to run workshops if a trip would involve too much travel. As a school we enjoy themed days or weeks where we all work together in mixed age groups or in our classes on the same theme. We have an International Day every year which broadens our horizons and provides a window on the world, we also have Book Weeks, Art Weeks, Eco Days, Forest Days, Maths Days or days that celebrate Easter and Harvest. Some of these happen every year and others every few years so our calendar does not become too overloaded!