The
Curriculum
We
are very proud of our curriculum at Charlton Horethorne Primary
School. We have taken a long time to create an exciting and
challenging programme of work for our students and we are
constantly considering what we teach and how we teach it.
What
we teach…
Our
curriculum covers all the areas of study in the National Curriculum.
However, we have recognised that, in everyday life, we rarely
use our knowledge in isolated little chunks. For example,
planning a trip or buying groceries both involve several processes
and it is the same with our curriculum. Children see much
more relevance in a broad, problem solving approach to work.
So, we have taken all the National Curriculum subjects and
combined them in a two year rolling programme of cross-curricular
topics. Each topic has a main theme such as "Power"
which looks at life in Victorian times. Within this topic
we study the British Empire and its worldwide influence (geography)
and we study how steam power allowed industry in Britain to
flourish and enabled transport to develop rapidly (science).
Our topics also incorporate English, maths, ICT and other
traditional subjects.
Our topics are differentiated, acknowledging the different
ability levels of our students. Each topic also contains challenges
which extend the learning and allow the children to apply
their knowledge into new areas. We use these challenges to
assess the student's understanding of a subject.
How
we teach…
Our
curriculum is creative, broad and challenging and fun.
We have also spent a lot of time developing our teaching methods.
We all learn things in different ways. Some people are visual
learners. They learn through pictures, charts or diagrams.
They map out processes as flow charts. Others are linguistic
learners. They need to talk, read or write. We have used the
work of the educator Howard Gardiner on Multiple Intelligences
to develop various teaching methods that allow children to
learn in the way that suits them. We also encourage children
to learn in ways that might be difficult for them. This might
be through drama, writing or art work. By working to their
strengths, our students enjoy learning and make excellent
progress.
And
there's more…
We
have also considered what gets taught in addition to the main
subject curriculum.
It used to be called the "hidden" curriculum. That
is, things that children need to develop in order to become
social, mature individuals. Things like working with others,
setting themselves high standards and so on. We have called
these Learner Expectations.
Our Learner Expectations are:
These
are built into our topics and discussed in class and assembly
times. Children are encouraged to think about the Learner
Expectations as they work.
And
of course there is assessment…
We
use several formal and informal methods of assessment, from
teacher assessments and student self assessment to statutory
tests. Some assessment happens while work is being produced
and tells us what needs to be done next. Other assessment
happens after an activity or topic. This tells us about the
child's level of attainment.
At Charlton Horethorne we have created our own student tracker
system which lets us follow a child's progress in reading,
writing, mathematics and science. We follow progress from
year 1 to year 6 and compare this with the national expectations.
We can then address any weak areas in a child's learning.
Set
out below are our most recent statutory test scores for Key
Stage 1 and Key Stage 2:
