Curriculum overview

We develop our children through a combination of what is taught, how it is taught and all of the daily interactions we have. Staff and children are driven by our Redhill ANTLERS: ambition, never giving up, teamwork, love of learning, equality and fairness, respect and service (our school values) and staff always behave with these in mind to ensure that we are role models for our pupils. 

The social and emotional needs of our children take prominence within our daily routines. Our day always begins positively, using a restorative approach to behaviour management with a smiley face and a greeting to ensure that the correct tone is set for the day. We believe in spreading positivity and creating a warm and safe learning environment that includes approachable adults who pupils know will nurture and support them to achieve their best. Staff develop and maintain strong relationships with children so that they know they are listened to and their opinions are respected.

Our curriculum consists of a range of planned experiences. These include: lessons, theme days, assemblies, clubs, sporting events, trips and visits, workshops, residential camps, fundraising, and community work just to name a few. Our curriculum is designed so that subject specific knowledge and skills are built upon throughout our pupils’ school experiences and woven through the whole curriculum to ensure that pupils can relate to their learning and build upon their experiences. Our curriculum has been built on cognitive science principles and the consistent retrieval of knowledge from the long-term memory into the short-term memory so that neurological connections are strengthened. We use research based pedagogical methods to embed key knowledge into our pupils’ long-term memories by taking a ‘foundational learning’ approach through the use of: memory cards, quizzing and fast learning to increase knowledge retrieval. 

Within the core subjects: Reading, Writing, Maths and Science, RE teachers use long-term planning designs as a basis for their planning where subject leaders have mapped out essential knowledge and skills that are chronologically sequenced throughout each school phase. Staff then translate these designs into smaller units: half term, weekly and daily plans where the specific needs of the learners are addressed and adapted.  Learning is carefully tailored to meet the needs of children through meticulous planning and preparation based on knowledge of outcomes and assessment. The sequence of learning has been carefully considered based on the National Curriculum. Lessons take into account prior learning to ensure that new learning builds progressively. We also know which learning comes next to ensure that the necessary knowledge and skills are taught ready to be built upon in the future. Learning is broken down into small steps, so the learning is meaningful. Prior learning continues to be revisited during both ‘Maths Meetings’ and ‘Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation Meetings’ so that pupils are able to practise and consolidate prior knowledge.  

We believe that reading is the key to unlocking a child’s full potential – if a child can read, they are able to access all other curriculum areas; therefore, reading is at the heart of everything we do. Starting in the Early Years, all pupils are provided with picture books, phonetically decodable books and books targeted at their reading age to take home to practise with the family. Pupils also begin their ‘Read Write Inc’ journey where they learn to read initial sounds and segment and blend sounds into words.

As pupils move into Key Stage 1, we provide daily reading interventions for all pupils so that they have the opportunity to practise their oral fluency and comprehension skills on a regular basis with a highly skilled member of the team. We also provide guided reading opportunities through the use of Read Write Inc Ditty books in year 1 and ‘Reading Rocketeers’ in year 2 where pupils develop their reading and comprehension skills even further.

Guided reading is taught daily and reading projects are set based upon vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and summarising skills. 

We have designed our curriculum rich with language and literature which builds on prior learning from the Early Years and Foundation Stage to the end of Key Stage 2 ensuring consistency and progression across the whole school. Specific vocabulary is taught within all subjects and pupils discover both the synonyms and antonyms of new words to broaden their language knowledge even further. The application of new language is applied during discussions or activities and modelled by staff in both written and oral form. Books are used as a stimulus to provide knowledge in different subjects and contexts for vocabulary already taught.