At Pocklington Church of England VC Infant school our curriculum intent is strongly linked to our curriculum drivers, which are: Community and Culture, Personal Growth and Wellbeing, Natural World and Challenge. The main intention of our curriculum is that pupils will leave Pocklington Infants as children who understand themselves with a love of learning in their life.
Our Curriculum Drivers
Community & Culture
We will give children the opportunity to interact and understand different cultures and faiths, celebrating our similarities and differences. It is important to raise awareness and appreciation of different cultures, developing respect and acceptance for people of different backgrounds to be included in their lives. Our curriculum appreciates the importance of the protected characteristics and British Values, taking opportunities to celebrate and appreciate these differences, beyond just tolerating them. We incorporate the local and wider community across our balanced and broad curriculum. Access and opportunities to experience the arts in a range of settings is weaved through our curriculum, aspiring to expand children’s understanding of expression in a range of creative ways. We aim to involve parents to be part of our school by contributing their achievements and skills in a constructive and meaningful way.
Personal Growth & Wellbeing
We aim to give children the tools to grow spiritually and emotionally; to learn about who they are, who they want to be and where their future could be. Children are given time to explore their feelings and thoughts in a safe welcoming environment, where all are appreciated. We aim for children to become aware of how to manage their own personal physical and mental health.
Natural World
We aim to make the most out of the environment around us, teaching children to appreciate and extend their understanding through creating meaningful experiences for them. We intend to offer opportunities to involve the natural world in our learning, making the most of our school grounds, local community, and opportunities to experience environments outside of the local community.
Challenge
We encourage children to develop their initiative by recognising challenges as positive ways to grow themselves. Through moving out of their comfort zones, children can recognise how they can best respond to challenges, using perseverance to become more resourceful, more confident and develop independent learning behaviours. Our curriculum is designed to ignite curiosity through meaningful and purposeful experiences.
Implementation of the Curriculum
In EYFS, we follow the statutory framework which underpins our personalised curriculum. The focus of our Early Years is based on the Early Excellence curriculum model (3-5 years)
Our timetable has been developed to ensure the children have daily extended time in our high quality provision. This gives the children a chance to immerse themselves in their selected learning, using our core resources. These resources have been selected to develop the children’s knowledge and skills progressively over the year whilst staying consistent, giving the children the opportunity to become the experts. The staff in our early years scaffold the children in their selected areas and help develop their knowledge and skills through sustained shared thinking and effective questioning.
Some areas of provision are enhanced to help the children learn about a topic or a skill that needs more support, based on the assessed judgements of trained adults. Areas that are enhanced will be adapted in a way that is suited directly to the needs of the children’s development. The core resources form a consistent structure to the provision, and are still available even though enhancements may be offered.
Directed activities are also offered in EYFS, this is to deliver specific concepts, knowledge and skills, such as phonics and maths.
In Year 1, subjects are taught through direct teacher input with either/or independent learning tasks or group work with an adult.
In Year 2, direct teaching continues and we build on the skills acquired in previous years by providing independent problem solving investigative tasks across the curriculum. We encourage pupils to develop higher-order thinking skills by articulating, explaining, reasoning, analysing and discussing their thoughts and ideas. This provides a supportive bridge to the teaching methods used in the Junior school.
We enrich the curriculum through: visits and visitors to the school, use of the school grounds using activities inspired by Forest Schools, and local community visits. We offer a range of after school clubs which vary during the year. Every child has the opportunity to perform in a show each year.
Please see our policies page for more information about our teaching and learning policy, by clicking this link.