The Purple Learning Motto
Loving every step
Encouraging others
Always trying your hardest
Riding out of your comfort zone
Nudging forwards
IGNITING THAT BRAIN!!!
Never giving up
Going on
By Harvey (When he was in class 1)
Our core aim is to engage and inspire children. Therefore, our curriculum provides rich and stimulating opportunities from year to year. We want our children to become independent and life-long learners, who question and are excited about the world around them.
All of our lessons encompass the 3 P’s – Passion, Pace and Pitch, ensuring that children are enthused and challenged in all that they do.
Understanding how to be successful learners is one of the vital aspects that we teach our children. Through our work with Diana Pardoe, children learn about resilience and perseverance and an understanding of how to truly be the ‘best that they can be’ in everything that they set out to achieve.
To find out more about our work with Diana Pardoe you can find her book, Towards Successful Learning here:
In this book and through her training she is providing us with a model to support and guide children to become the best learners they can be. This, alongside our ethos of ‘being the best we can be,’ help to develop our children into confident and persistent learners.
Success is celebrated at every step and our children, with the help of all involved, learn what it takes to reach their full potential.
Phonics Teaching at Crowmarsh School
Our phonics teaching follows the Letters and Sounds program alongside the new English curriculum. Phonics sessions are taught regularly in KS1 and through intervention groups for any children in KS2 that require extra support.
Children in KS1 will not be given books to read until they are confident at reading the majority of the Phase 3 graphemes and they can recall some of the key high frequency words. Phonic work and high frequency word lists are sent home with children in Years R and 1 to be practised.
At the end of Year 1 all children take the government phonic check and retake it in Year 2 if they fail to meet the expected standard.
We want to encourage children to love reading and sharing books with others. Therefore, reading is a priority in our school and every class has guided reading sessions at the same time every day. This allows ‘peer reading’ to take place for older and younger children to share books together.
To see an overview of the subjects taught at Crowmarsh Gifford, please click on the following links.
English (Please note that topics are subject to change or move from term to term)
Writing
Mathematics (This is a key priority across the school this year)
Calculation Policy From ‘Kangaroo Maths‘
We approach everything with a ‘growth mindset’ and this is even more important when dealing with mathematics. Our school adopts the #YesUCan mentality and use this to enthuse and excite all children about being mathematicians. For more information visit Jo Boaler’s website: youcubed.com Also, see the document below entitled, ‘Advice for Parents’ on how you can help develop a mathematical mindset at home.
Videos
The following videos explain a little more about how we approach learning generally and effective maths teaching. We really encourage you to watch them!
Jo Boaler – How You Can Be Good at Maths and Other Surprising Facts About Learning
Sal Khan – Let’s Teach for Mastery, Not Test Scores
To see the whole overview of the National Curriculum Mathematics Programmes of Study, click here.
Science
Computing
Geography
History
P.E.
R.E.
Philosophy for Children and Higher Order Questioning form a major part of our RE lessons in school. Currently, we follow the Scheme of Work that has been put together by the Diocese of Oxford’s RE Team, which complies with the locally agreed syllabi and reflects our ‘enquiry’ based approach. We are not allowed to make this document public as it is only for Church of England primaries, however, if you would like to see this planning in more detail, you may request a copy from the class teacher.
French
We have a rich and vibrant French curriculum that our KS2 children participate in every week. Even though our KS1 pupils don’t have discrete French lessons, they benefit from learning basic French vocabulary to get them ready for the full curriculum when they enter year 3.
Dates for the Diary