Curriculum Statement
Aim
We are committed to nurturing children’s curiosity and creativity through an inspiring, broad and engaging curriculum. Everyday children are challenged and encouraged to be independent learners, to be resilient and aspirational, so that they all reach their full potential.
We provide opportunities for children to experience a sense of achievement through sport, music and creative arts. We aim to instil a passion for leaning that will empower them to become successful and to make positive contributions to the local community and beyond.
Provision
We follow the statutory National curriculum 2014, which provides pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge that they need to be educated citizens.
- Provide children with knowledge and skills to become confident individuals, independent learners and responsible citizens
- Prepare children for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life
- Provide real life experiences and contexts
- Celebrate the multi-cultural diversity
- Allow and encourage personalised learning
- Nurture the whole child
- Provide spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
Our Foundation Stage curriculum (applies to Nursery and Reception children)
We follow the Early Years Framework. This comprises of seven areas of learning, including three prime areas:
- Communication and Language
- Physical Development
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
and four specific areas:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
From these, we have created our own Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) that are progressive towards the end of year expectations.
Throughout EYFS children are supported to learn through play, which encourages independent learning. Children are well prepared for their transition into Year 1.
Parents may find this document a helpful guide when your child is first starting school:
What to expect in the Early Years Foundation Stage: a guide for parents
YR Curriculum OverviewY1 Curriculum Overview
Theme Planners and Knowledge Organisers
Theme planners are used to show the key learning taking place each half-term. To support pupils with learning key facts and vocabulary, we use knowledge organisers. You will find the theme planners and knowledge organisers for each half-term on our Year Group pages.
Five key strands act as drivers of our curriculum at Rushy Meadow. These are captured by our RUSHY acronym.
Resilient Individuals
Our students are curious learners, who show resilience in the face of challenge.
At Rushy Meadow, we want children to understand the need to persevere and learn to be problem solvers. We encourage children to have a growth mindset, teach them that learning new things can be a challenge and explain that we do not become experts immediately. We will encourage children to keep working and develop in them the importance of not giving up even when things are difficult. We will encourage them to reflect on their learning to identify strengths as well as areas they can develop further.
Communicators
Our students are building their vocabulary from their first day of school and beyond so that they can express themselves clearly. They learn about the world around them by developing a love of reading.
At Rushy Meadow, we want our children to demonstrate a wide vocabulary, good listening skills, high levels of literacy and become confident readers and writers. We want our children to be able to communicate in a variety of ways to get their message across powerfully and eloquently.
Aspirational
Our students aim to excel. We have high expectations for attendance, conduct and attitudes to learning.
At Rushy Meadow, we want all of children to aspire to be the very best they can be and continuously challenge themselves as learners. We will provide our children with an ambitious curriculum and encourage them to produce work of high quality, take pride in themselves and work to the best of their ability. We expect our children to develop excellent character, to be ambassadors for the school and to demonstrate to new pupils what we do and what we don’t do at Rushy.
We want children to enjoy coming to our school and will provide exciting opportunities for them to learn in fun, creative and engaging ways. We will make the most of the local community, of visitors and visits, providing children with real life learning.
Have a Healthy Body, Healthy Mind
Our students know the importance of keeping their bodies and minds healthy. They have many opportunities to be active in school and develop strategies to support their mental health.
At Rushy Meadow, we recognise the importance of promoting healthy lifestyles and want our pupils to develop an increasing understanding of the many different factors that contribute to keeping healthy. Our curriculum provides opportunities for our pupils to learn about their physical health, what constitutes a balanced diet and about how exercise benefits the body. In addition, we want our pupils to have a developing understanding of how to maintain good mental health. Our curriculum, therefore, teaches an understanding of emotions, promotes resilience and encourages an open approach to discussing worries or concerns.
Our curriculum also includes opportunities for our pupils to learn how to keep themselves safe in all areas of life. An important element of this includes safety on-line and when communicating using technology.
Diversity Champions
Our children understand the diversity of the world we live in. They are tolerant of the way in which other people choose to live their lives and respect the culture and beliefs of those around them.
At Rushy Meadow, we want our children to celebrate differences and diversity. We want them to speak up if they believe someone is being treated unfairly. We want our children to develop an awareness of what is beyond the classroom door, beyond Carshalton and develop a sense that they are part of a huge, wider world. We will teach them to care for the environment and consider how they can be responsible, make good choices and be great citizens.
At Rushy Meadow, we offer pupils a wide range of trips, workshops and experiences in order to bring the curriculum to life. These have been carefully selected by considering how they will relate to our themes and how they will benefit our pupils. We believe that each one of our students can benefit from a rich programme of trips, workshops and experiences. These may include visiting a museum they've never been to before or taking a first trip to the seaside.
As a school, we are mindful of the additional cost of these events. We try to balance costs across the year and across pupils' journey with us, so that the financial demand on parents is reasonable. For some events, concessions are offered to families of pupils in receipt of pupil premium funding. Wh If you have any concerns about the costs of trips, workshops or experiences, please do speak to our Headteacher.
Where trips are more expensive than usual, for instance if they involve use of a coach, we consider ways to reduce the cost relayed to parents. This could, for example, involve holding a bake sale and deducting the proceeds from the cost of the trip.
Where possible, we deliberately opt to use public transport for our trips. This is for a number of reasons:
- reducing the cost to parents
- reducing our carbon footprint
- equipping pupils with the ability to use public transport
- teaching pupils expectations when travelling by public transport
Rushy Meadow Trips, Workshops and Experiences Overview
Trips and Workshops Overview
At Rushy Meadow, we encourage our children to develop debate skills. Opportunities for debate are built into our curriculum, whether taking place in an English lesson or considering whether evacuation was the right decision in World War II.
To promote weekly debate, we have a weekly Thunk that is shared in assembly. A Thunk is an open question that does not have a correct or incorrect answer. Thunks are designed to stimulate creative thought, encourage children to share ideas and promote out of the box thinking.
Below are some examples of Thunks we have thunked at Rushy Meadow. If you debate any of these at home, our Headteacher, Mr Needham, would love to hear your thoughts on the school gate:
Should schools produce good learners or good students? Is there a difference?
Would you rather fly to space or visit every country in the World?
If you could live in any book setting, where would it be?
If you could swap places with anyone from the past for a day, who would you pick?
Would you be a different person if one of your parents had a different job?
If my flight has a stopover on my way to my destination, but I don’t leave the airport, have I visited that country?
Should there be fewer rules outside rather than more?
If you could be any animal, what would you choose and why?
What’s more important: yesterday, today or tomorrow?
Are your neighbours still your neighbours when they're on holiday?
If the hands fall off my clock, is it still a clock?
If you could fly for one day, what would you do? Where would you go?
Is saying a rude word out loud worse than writing it in a text?
If you could go forwards or backwards to any point in your life, when would you choose?
If you had a magic watch that could pause time, what would you use it for?
Would you rather live without TV or books?
Should we take it in turns to run the country?
If you could change one thing about your home, what would it be?
Should the voting age stay at 18, or should it be lowered?
Would you rather be too hot or too cold?
If you had a magic watch that could pause time, what would you use if for?
If you could go forwards or backwards to any point in your life, when would you choose?
Would you rather have breakfast for every meal or dinner for every meal?
Would you rather have 10 brothers and sisters or no siblings at all?
If you could swap places with anyone else for a day, who would you pick?
Should schools produce good learners or good students? Is there a difference?
Would you rather fly to space or visit every country in the World?
Is a submarine more like a plane or a boat?
Is a zebra black with white stripes or white with black stripes?
Is it better to be right or nice?
If you hold a speaker upside down, does the sound come out upside down?
Is a bark a word?
Is there a perfect time for a nap?
Can you feel 2 emotions at the same time?
Can you hear a picture?
Every Friday, we celebrate children's learning with Book Bingo. This is an opportunity for children to share their learning with the Headteacher and Assistant Headteachers.
Each child from Years 1-6 is numbered in their class from 1-30. Each week, one number is selected from the bingo wheel. If a child's number is selected, they bring their books to share with us. This means we could have all the number 7's or all the number 23's, with 14 children joining us each week.
This has become a lovely tradition at Rushy Meadow and it is wonderful seeing older pupils take such an interest in younger pupils' learning.
