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Curriculum

A curriculum that promotes the school’s culture and aims

What is the rationale for the school's curriculum?

The Harlington and Sundon Academy Trust strives to offer a curriculum that gives children the best possible start to their education by developing their independence, curiosity, imagination and desire to learn; we want children to leave our school with a collection of memorable learning experiences. The Academy endeavours to provide a stimulating learning environment, offering a variety of high quality and exciting learning opportunities and experiences within a broad and balanced curriculum.

The curriculum promotes our common values whilst recognising and valuing our differences within school and the wider community. Please see below for curriculum subject intent statements.

Curriculum Intent
The curriculum at the Harlington and Sundon Academy Trust is designed to: recognise children’s prior learning, provide first hand learning experiences, allow the children to develop as independent, confident successful learners with high aspirations who know how to make a positive contribution to their community and wider society. There is a high focus on developing children’s moral, spiritual, social and cultural understanding. We aim to prepare children for life in modern Britain and ensure children build resilience and become creative, critical thinkers.

The Harlington and Sundon Academy provides a highly inclusive environment. Every child is recognised as a unique individual and enjoys their educational experiences. We celebrate and welcome differences within our school community. The ability to learn is underpinned by the teaching of basic skills, knowledge, concepts and values. Our focus on curriculum development is carefully designed to ensure coverage and progression. It provides children with memorable experiences, in addition to providing a range of diverse and rich opportunities; both engaging children’s learning as well as developing a range of transferable skills. We believe that children should feel safe and happy so that they can develop curiosity, enquiry and a thirst for new experiences and knowledge. Values education underpins our ethos and behaviours promoting positive attitudes to learning which reflect the values and skills needed to promote responsibility for learning and future success.

Community involvement is an essential part of our curriculum as we celebrate local traditions, learning new skills to enable the children to take an active role in events throughout the year.

Children leave the academy with a sense of belonging to a tightly knit community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections and become lifelong learners.

Curriculum Implementation
Our carefully planned curriculum balances the national expectations and an all-encompassing range of experiences allowing our children to flourish. Clear strategic planning allows the curriculum to be dynamic and adapt to the context of the school and children’s needs. Age related expectations combine the acquisition of knowledge and development of skills to create a purposeful and exciting learning journey for every child. The curriculum has high expectations to combine transferable skills, demonstrate a breadth of vocabulary and develop strong cross curricular links. Inviting classroom environments stimulate and engage quality thinking and reasoning. Explicit daily, weekly and medium term planning is responsive to children’s needs; incorporating holistic approaches to teaching and learning. Our detailed marking policy is implemented consistently as opportunities for children to reflect on their learning and think deeply and carefully about their feedback.

Curriculum Impact
We use rigorous triangulated monitoring throughout the year to gauge the impact of the curriculum design. The Senior Leadership team and subject leaders work collaboratively to carefully monitor core and foundation subjects: reviewing learning, evaluating pupil voice, providing individual feedback to move practice forward, celebrating positives and highlighting areas of development. Our whole school team strengthen our ethos and vision as we work together to reflect upon our curriculum and share outcomes driving forward next steps. We don’t confuse coverage with progress when assessing as learning is measured through careful analysis of the application of skills across the curriculum; showing how acquisition of knowledge is enhanced dramatically by expectations to evidence quality thinking and demonstrate individual understanding. Class teachers and subject leaders conduct performance analysis linked to this triangulated monitoring measuring performance against individual and school targets which are reviewed regularly.

As a diverse and multi-cultural school community, we believe our children possess unique talents, skills and qualities. As such, they have the right to succeed, the right to recognise their own greatness and the right to develop who they are in a respectful and nurturing environment. Our school ethos is firmly underpinned by our values with a love of learning being the foundation of everything we do, so that we really are “Learning for Life.”

Remote Learning

Should we need to close school for any reason we may need to move to remote learning. This will be adapted according to the situation and circumstances at the time and the needs of the children.

Should individual children need to learn remotely due to personal reasons, please contact the school for an individualised approach.

Early Years

Our Early Years curriculum is based around topics, covering the seven areas of learning and development (as set out in the Early Years Statutory Framework).  We adapt and alter planning to address children’s current needs and interests so the listed topics may not always be covered in full, or occasionally at all. Basing planning on the children’s interests  is crucial for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building their capacity to learn, form relationships and thrive.
Please click here for our progression documents.

Key Stage 1 and 2

In Key Stages 1 and 2 our curriculum has been updated to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum which can be accessed here.

This became compulsory from September 2014.  The subjects covered include:

  • Core subjects – English, Mathematics, Science and Computing
  • Foundation subjects – History, Geography, French, Design Technology, Art, Music, PE and Modern Foreign Language (KS2)
  • For Religious Education (RE) the Bedfordshire Scheme is followed.

Please see below for our whole school curriculum long term plan to find out what we will be teaching and learning during this academic year.  Additionally you can find our termly curriculum overviews in each class newsletter which can be found on the individual class page.  These will give you further information about what our pupils will be learning.   Should you have any further questions regarding the curriculum, please contact your child’s teacher.

Phonics and Reading

We use the SoundsWrite scheme for phonics and the Oxford Reading Tree and Project X books for reading.

More information about the national curriculum can be found here.

The curriculum overview document at the bottom of the page will give you more information about the topics covered in each year group. Please click links below for our curriculum progression documents.

The class newsletters also contain information about the curriculum and can be found on the class pages.
If you need any further information please contact the class teacher via the school office: office@harlingtonlower.co.uk