Our Curriculum

At Denby Free CE (Aided) Primary School, we are committed to providing a broad and balanced curriculum that inspires, nurtures, and educates our children to shine. Our carefully designed curriculum is tailored to the unique needs and context of our learners, ensuring that each child has the opportunity to achieve to the best of their ability.

A Curriculum for Growth and Fulfilment

Our curriculum is underpinned by our school's vision and values, which guide us in creating an environment where our pupils can thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. We believe that every child deserves the chance to acquire a wealth of knowledge and experience, becoming critical and independent thinkers who are equipped to lead safe, healthy, and fulfilling lives.

Linking Learning to Our Community and Beyond

At the heart of our curriculum are the Humanities subjects, which serve as topic drivers, allowing us to connect learning to our local context and the wider world. By weaving together subjects such as History, Geography, and Religious Education, we help our pupils understand how our locality fits within the multicultural tapestry of Great Britain, fostering a sense of belonging and community.

Nurturing the Whole Child

Alongside our academic focus, we place great emphasis on the social, emotional, and spiritual development of our pupils. Through our comprehensive Religious Education programme and daily Collective Worship, we cultivate our children's moral, social, and cultural understanding, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to cooperate with their peers and the adults around them, and to respect one another both inside and outside the classroom.

Adaptable and Responsive

To ensure that our curriculum meets the diverse needs of our learners, we have carefully adapted various schemes of work to suit the unique requirements of our school. This approach allows us to provide appropriately challenging work, catering to individual starting points and supporting each child's journey towards success.

Preparing for the Future

As our pupils progress through their primary education, we are committed to equipping them with the essential skills in English, Maths and Computing. These foundational competencies will enable them to make the most of the learning opportunities offered at their secondary school and in their future adult lives.

What do we want our children to learn?

We want our children to excel academically across all National Curriculum subjects, to become curious learners and responsible members of the local, national and global community. We want to provide a solid foundation for our children, so that they become confident, articulate and knowledgeable leaders of the future.

Key features of our curriculum are:

• We are proud to be a church school and we want our children to recognise, accept and celebrate different cultures, backgrounds and beliefs, preparing them for life in modern Britain.

• We provide a curriculum that encourages our children to become responsible, well-rounded, socially aware and confident citizens. We promote both good physical and good mental health, emphasising the need for our children to become self-motivated, self-directed and resilient learners.

• Leadership development is central to our curriculum and is designed to nurture character and citizenship, so that our children can confidently contribute to society. 

• The curriculum is designed to foster thought, curiosity and a desire for learning in all our children, regardless of their starting points. By providing a relevant and personalised curriculum that reflects the local area, all children – including disadvantaged children and those with special needs – will succeed within our intellectually challenging environment.

• Reading is fundamental to all learning. We want all our children to be excited about reading. We build reading skills from the Early Years upwards, securing phonic knowledge rapidly and then developing essential comprehension skills.

• We develop a love for reading. Our texts are ambitious and motivating, supported by carefully selected texts from Literacy Tree.

• We are highly ambitious for our children and emphasise academic success. We carefully design our curriculum to be broad, balanced and knowledge-rich, so that our children know more and remember more. We plan for progression in knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare children for future success in their education and careers.

• Our learning is coherent, with knowledge building on knowledge. We identify what we want our children to learn (the Key Stage end points of learning) and break this down into building blocks (component parts), with robust assessment ensuring that children know more and remember more.

• Our children learn through a traditional, discrete subject model and acquire subject-specific knowledge, with literacy underpinning everything we teach. We believe that this is the best way to prepare children for future learning.

• We emphasise strong connections across subjects because we want our curriculum to be real and meaningful. Problem solving and application in the real world, including working with the local community to create enriching learning experiences, play a key part in our curriculum offer.

• Our extra-curricular offer centres around sport, creativity, performing arts, enterprise and social action.

Early Years Curriculum Offer

For children in the Early Years Foundation Stage, we adopt a rigorous approach towards individualised teaching and learning. The statutory Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum is the basis of the Early Years curriculum.

There are seven areas of learning and development that shape educational provision in our Early Years setting. All areas of learning and development are important and inter-connected.

Three ‘Prime’ areas are particularly crucial for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning and building their capacity to learn, form relationships and thrive:

• Personal and Emotional Development

• Communication and Language

• Physical Development

Our school also supports children in four ‘Specific’ areas, through which the three prime areas are strengthened and applied:

• Literacy

• Mathematics

• Understanding the World

• Expressive Arts and Design

We deliver learning for all seven areas through purposeful play and whole-class learning experiences, with a balance of adult-led instruction and child-initiated activities. Through play, our children explore and develop learning experiences which help them make sense of the world. They practise and build ideas, learning how to control themselves and understand the need for rules. We provide the opportunity for our pupils to think creatively and work and communicate with others as they investigate and solve problems.

Phonics Teaching

The school follows a rigorous and systematic approach to the teaching of synthetic phonics following Little Wandle phonics scheme of work in the Early Years and Year 1. Our school phonics policy establishes consistent practice, continuity and progression in the teaching and learning of phonics.

Key Stages 1 and 2

At Key Stages 1 and 2, subjects are taught in discrete, timetabled lessons which cover:

• English (incorporating the regular teaching of synthetic phonics)

• Mathematics

• Science

• History

• Geography

• Religious Education

• Modern Foreign Languages

• Art and Design

• Design and Technology

• Computing

• Music

• Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education

• Physical Education