Our Curriculum

Curriculum Vision: Our Intent

Curriculum Vision: Our Intent

At Chidham, we believe that an ambitious, innovative and inspirational curriculum, will lead to a love of learning and exceptional pupil outcomes.

With Jesus at the heart, we provide a broad and engaging curriculum, one that is based around rich experiential opportunities that promote deeper learning and a curriculum that develops knowledge and skills towards clear end points. We understand the importance of reading as a key to unlocking other areas of the curriculum, therefore developing a love for reading from the earliest stage, is central to all that we do.

Our children are valued as unique members of God’s family, and we nurture our children through spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. Educating our children about mental and physical health is important to us and we encourage a growth-mindset in all of our children and staff. We have high expectations and aspirations for all children, including disadvantaged children and those with SEND, equipping them with the knowledge and cultural capital, so that all our children are prepared for the next stage of their life.

The joy of learning is embedded in our culture at Chidham, and as a family, we celebrate and share this with the local community wherever possible.

Thanks largely to our curriculum offer, we are proud that our children leave our school as confident, knowledgeable, well-rounded individuals. Every child is unique and they come to school having had a wide range of different experiences throughout their early years. We value and build upon the work undertaken by parents and other adults during these early stages. Children learn at different rates, and have differing needs. It is because of this, and our understanding of the children in our care, that we adopt a range of teaching styles to match each child’s learning as closely as we possibly can. Through the course of any one day children will have opportunities to work alone, with a learning partner, and as part of the whole class.  All our learning is planned to be rigorous, child-centred and thought provoking to engage the children.

Our curriculum is delivered through a 1 year cycle of termly projects, (for YR they are half termly) using  Cornerstones to underpin all: https://cornerstoneseducation.co.uk/curriculum/curriculum-maestro/

We do not teach Cornerstones as an “off the peg” curriculum – we the use Cornerstones materials to facilitate the National Curriculum and to meet our children’s needs. What is helpful is that Cornerstones is a fully sequenced connected curriculum. It has subject progression in knowledge and skills in some of the foundation subjects which has supported us in developing our curriculum to meet our children’s needs.

We are excited and encouraged that our curriculum meets the needs of our children’s. Some of the learning happens in school in the classroom or in our school grounds and at other times within our community e.g Those in Apple Class work with the Chichester Harbour Conservancy education department down at Dell Quay, Chestnut Class at East Head https://www.conservancy.co.uk/

We have invested in the “Commando Joe” programme: https://commandojoes.co.uk/ as we saw (as a result of the COVID lockdown) the need to build up the children’s resilience and social skills. Those in Willow Class work weekly with Rob Mayne re The Mayne Trainer programme. Over the year the children develop their leadership skills as well as participate in character building activities

All our classes (from Cherry to London Plane Class) participate in Forest School Learning https://forestschoolassociation.org/what-is-forest-school/ and we encourage the children to be excited about sport, by us being actively involved in our local School Sport Partnership Programme https://www.westsussexwestssp.co.uk/ We also ensure that the children meet the government’s expectation that they should have access to 30 minutes active learning (in addition to planned PE lessons & breaktimes) through active learning activities in the classroom.

We are developing the children’s community spirit by facilitating planned weekly house team meetings for all in KS2, enabling those in London Plane, Birch and Willow Classes to be playground activity leaders, and those in Birch Class visit King’s Lodge Nursing Home spending time with their residents. Each class creates “Get well cards” termly for those on Bosham Ward at St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester through the NHS “adopt a ward” scheme

We ensure that every topic has a positive role model focus on individuals who identify as someone from an ethnic minority; and we ensure there is a positive input involving the Traveller community in every topic also.

Reception

Children in the Reception year

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) covers children’s learning from birth to five years (to the end of the academic year in which your child has their fifth birthday). The Curriculum ensures that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children are ready for school and gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life.

The Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum is an integrated, play and activity based curriculum, culminating on assessment against the Early Learning Goals and built around seven areas of learning, with the prime areas being: Communication Language, Physical Development and Personal, Social and Emotional Development. The specific areas that the prime areas are then explored are: Literacy, Maths, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design.

Play supports the children’s learning. Through carefully structured activities, they have the opportunity to ‘discover’ new concepts, practise ideas and give reality to their learning.  The play is supported by structured whole class sessions on phonics, reading and mathematics.  The children enjoy this balance of adult led and child led learning.

The children’s learning is closely observed and supported throughout their year in Reception and at the end of the year we use all the information we have collected to complete each child’s Foundation stage profile.

Children in Key Stage 1 i.e. Years 1 and 2 follow the National Curriculum for 5 -7 year olds and the children in Key Stage 2 i.e. Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 follow the National Curriculum for 7-11 year olds. Further information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-primary-curriculum

The National Curriculum includes:

• English, Mathematics, Science and computing
• History, Geography, Art, Music, Physical Education, Design Technology and at KS2 a Modern Foreign Language (we teach French)
• Religious Education in accordance with the West Sussex Agreed Syllabus
• Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE)

At the end of Key Stage 2 there are statutory assessments in English and Mathematics. In Year 4 there is a statutory assessment in times tables. At the end of Year 1 there is a statutory assessment in phonics. Further information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/key-stage-1-and-2-national-curriculum-tests-information-for-parents

Please follow this link for examples as to what these assessments look like: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum-assessments-practice-materials

For further information about any aspect of our curriculum or the statutory assessments, please do not hesitate to contact the school.