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Curriculum Overview

Intent, Implementation and Impact

Intent

At Grimes Dyke our vision is to create a primary school that encourages its children to Aspire, Enjoy and Achieve. We aim to help each child become caring, confident and curious young people, who are well equipped to transition smoothly into their next stage of learning and achieving. We support, guide and inspire our children through excellent teaching practices and exciting learning opportunities, which have their foundations in the National Curriculum. By working with the families in our local community, we hope to create a thriving school community, in which everyone involved is celebrated and valued for both their successes and failures.

The National Curriculum content is our foundation, but our unique curriculum offer is adapted contextually to meet the needs and interests of the children and families in our community. It is coherently planned and sequenced to ensure breadth of learning is developed over time, with repetitive progression, building both knowledge and skills. The Grimes Dyke curriculum is successfully adapted, designed and developed for pupils to ensure a wealth of first-hand experiences and opportunities, given that we recognise the financial and cultural poverty facing our children. This is following research and training into Eric Jensen’s understanding of ‘Teaching with Poverty in Mind.’ Finally, it is a curriculum with ambition for all pupils regardless of background or special educational needs and or disabilities. A curriculum to promote the knowledge and skills to improve the cultural capital for all children and one which has demonstrated improved outcomes in the past three years.

The following aims and staff expectations are quality assured through regular professional development training, meetings with staff, the senior leadership team, governors and local authority advisors.

 

Aims:

Guiding caring, confident and curious children.

Respect pupils, parents and staff and celebrate their similarities and differences

Interact with local community to offer opportunities that will expand horizons

Motivate and challenge our children to achieve academic success

Educate parents and families to create an aspirational school community

Show our children what they can achieve if they Aspire, Enjoy and Achieve

 

Dedicate time and effort into creating exciting lessons and learning opportunities

‘Yes I can do it’ attitude from all

Knowing, appreciating and recognising uniqueness of each child and recognise their potential.

Excellent learning outcomes both long and short term

 

School Staff Expectations:

 Staff have high expectations of themselves and all children.

  • We expect children to be challenged and to experience ‘struggle’ so they can learn.
  • We expect teachers to use assessment for learning strategies to check understanding, intervening in a timely manner when needed.
  • We expect children to make accelerated and sustained progress in lessons.
  • We expect staff to support children in developing independence ready for secondary school.
  • We expect teachers to regularly provide constructive feedback to children

Implementation

The school has identified reading as the main driver for the school curriculum, in order to improve pupils’ skills in fluency and confidence. Also, to provide subject knowledge and key subject vocabulary which is often lacking, due to deprived early life experiences and cultural / financial poverty. Quality texts are linked to topic themes along with additional books and reading resources, to give children the background knowledge and skills to access the subject matter in the National Curriculum. By children being immersed in quality texts in all subject areas they gain the reading skills necessary to progress; but also to develop enjoyment in using reading as a tool. Gaps in children’s reading skills are assessed through the ‘Big 10 Reading Skills’ approach, which focuses on all the skills needed to be a good reader. Gaps are addressed quickly and effectively through whole class teaching, same day intervention and targeted individual or group support / intervention.

We are continuing to develop the school curriculum throughout 19-20 and 20-21 have have focused our improvements so far on Reading, Writing, Maths, Science, History, Geography and PHSE. The remaining subjects will be a prime focus later this year and into the next academic year. Our curriculum is constantly under review to ensure it meets our school vision of Aspire, Enjoy, Achieve

Impact

The impact of higher curriculum expectations and improved teaching and learning at Grimes Dyke since 2017 is demonstrated by and overall picture of improved standards in all key stages. This is an upward trend across three years and is closing the gap between school and national peers showing good progress from low attainment on entry. Attainment on entry to KS1 and KS2 in the 2019-2020 academic year shows that this trend is set to continue. Skills, experience and knowledge on entry to the EYFS continue to remain low however the curriculum intent and implementation in the Early Years sets out to address these low starting points so that children make a rapid start to the National Curriculum in Y1.  Please click here to find more information about school performance data.