Our Curriculum
We have reviewed the way we deliver our curriculum to ensure that children are really engaged in learning. We endeavour to enthuse our children to want to find out more, to develop the important skills of problem solving, enquiry, creativity, independence, motivation and good self esteem. We strive to make sure that children leave our school with the essentials for learning and life ie have good literacy, numeracy and ICT skills, good learning and thinking skills and good Personal and Social skills. We do this through 'Enquiry Based Learning' which underpins our curriculum throughout school.
Our curriculum embraces both the National Curriculum 2014 and the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum embedding them into themes that are engaging and relevant to the children we teach. Our themes change each term and are developed to meet the current needs, interests and next steps in learning of the children in school. Our curriculum is not a table of topics or themes that can be placed on a shelf to come out year after year, but is an approach to learning that is planned to ensure we teach the required National Curriculum Objectives whilst at the same time encompassing the children's interests and needs.
The following document maps out our approach to the curriculum and demonstrates how all the facets link together:
Driffield CE Infant School Curriculum Map
Click on the link below to watch how and why we re-developed our curriculum:
Driffield CE Infant School Curriculum Development video
We place particular emphasis on the following ‘drivers’ which feed through every theme we teach:
Outdoor Learning and the Environment: valuing the outdoors as a vehicle to promote learning through the curriculum.
Spirituality: The awe and wonder of learning and exploring the variety of differences and relationships that exist within and between different religions, values and beliefs. There is a strong link to Christian Values and our Church School Status
Within the framework of our curriculum we ensure our children are taught the basic skills of reading, writing and maths to a high standard.
Reading
We use a system of synthetic phonics following the structure of 'Letters and Sounds' to teach early reading and give the children the vital skills they need to be able spell.All children have focused daily phonics lessons linked to guided reading and application of phonics into writing. . For guided reading we use a range of phonics based books including Pearson Phonics Bug, Collins Big Cat and Dandelion Readers.Children read daily and we do everything we can to ensure they leave our school with a love of reading To do this we incorporate regular visits to the local library, visits into school from storytellers and authors as well as providing children with a wealth of engaging reading books in school. We have recently developed a library in school funded by Friends of School.
Writing
Children have focused teaching of spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPAG) and handwriting. They are stimulated to write in a range of genres through our engaging topics and through independent tasks in our enquiry areas of learning. When ready they are taught to plan, do, review. In EYFS the children are encouraged to mark make through all the areas of learning in the unit as well as having specific writing lessons when they are ready. We do lots to support children's gross and fine motor development as this is paramount in developing confident young writers. We believe in providing a range of experiences to fire up children's imagination
More information and examples of the teaching of reading and writing on our English at Driffield CE Infant School Page
Maths
Following intensive research and involvement with a maths hub teacher research group we have recently adopted the mastery approach to teaching maths. Please have a look at lour maths page for more information on this approach. Maths at Driffield CE Infant School
To find out what your child will be learning in reading, writing and maths Please click on the links below. Our schemes have recently been rewritten to address the increased challenges of Curriculum 2014.
Reading Curriculum Writing Curriculum Maths Curriculum
