Curriculum Intent

Key Principles

At Redhill, we have designed and personalised our curriculum to ensure that all children leave us with a wide, foundation of knowledge, the necessary skills to be successful, lifelong learners and a passionate curiosity about the world around them. We based our curriculum on five key principles:
 

• Achieving academic excellence
• Increasing children’s cultural capital through a curriculum driven by literature
• Celebrating and encouraging creativity
• Teaching the necessary skills and attitudes for effective, sustained, independent learning
• Actively encouraging children to shape the curriculum and their education

 

The SECRET to our success

'The SECRET to our success' values are interweaved throughout all of our lessons to ensure that all children embody the values which we, as a school, hold dear:

 

SUPPORTIVE

ENTHUSIASTIC

CREATIVE

RESILIENT

ENVIRONMENTAL

THOUGHTFUL

These key values support outstanding achievement and make Redhill such a special place to be. Furthermore, they integrate social, moral, spiritual and cultural links effectively and contextually throughout all lessons.

 

Every half term, we have a whole school focus on a chosen value and each class plans and organises a Secret Showcase event which demonstrates their understanding of a selected value and how it links with their current learning. These showcases actively involve parents in the celebration and development of their children’s learning and provide a fantastic opportunity to share the children’s achievements and demonstrate the knowledge they have gained. You can find out more about these events on our Secret Showcase page.

 

Preparing for Transition

 Our curriculum is driven by the need to prepare our children for the next stage of their education, but also for lifelong learning. Through our curriculum, we develop the essential knowledge, skills and understanding which are the building blocks for later life. We aim for academic excellence in the core areas and expect a large proportion of our Year 6 children to be leaving school working at the ‘greater depth’ level in reading, writing and maths.  Our curriculum encompasses not only the formal requirements of the National Curriculum, but provides additional opportunities for children to find their passions and talents.

 

Key Three

We aim for all children to master the curriculum in each subject area and we have a clear progression through each subject in our ‘Redhill Learning Journey Framework’. This is distilled down to a carefully curated ‘key three’ in every foundation curriculum unit; what we see as the non-negotiable learning which each child should amass as they progress through school. By the end of Year 6, we hope academically that each child will have developed a solid body of knowledge and skills across the whole curriculum which will give them a secure base for the next stage of their education. 

 

Knowledge Organisers

 The knowledge organiser is the beating heart of each unit. The core content is meticulously curated and organised to clarify the knowledge necessary to develop a deep understanding in each unit of work. Over the course of the years, these knowledge organisers ensure that all pupils become culturally literate and have the opportunity to build a powerful foundation of knowledge. The knowledge organiser acts as a planning, teaching and assessment tool and provides complete clarity to leaders, teachers, pupils and parents about what is expected to be learnt and remembered by the end of the unit, and in the long term. 

 

British Values

 Our curriculum supports the exploration of new skills and experiences, helping to nurture resilience, curiosity and creativity.  The curriculum is further enhanced by our commitment to a values-based education (which includes British Values) and, through this, we provide learning experiences which promote confident, self-motivated pupils, eager for lifelong learning.

Specialisms

 

Together, our staff curated a list of our specialisms in school. These are areas in which we collectively believe we excel and where we believe we go above and beyond to develop the whole pupil – their self-esteem, their empathy, their confidence and their enjoyment of creativity and self-expression. These specialisms also help us to provide rich and varied opportunities for developing ‘cultural capital’. These opportunities are interwoven through each year group, so that by the end of their journey at Redhill, children have experienced and learned about the best of what has been thought, said, created and achieved. 

Our Specialisms

 Well-being:

Children's mental health and well-being is central to everything we do at Redhill. Collectively, our staff have worked together to create our Redhill Mindful Moments scheme of activities. These are interwoven throughout our curriculum and designed to allow teachers and staff to be instantly responsive to pupils' needs and to tailor their activities to the immediate well-being needs present in their classroom. We intend to provide a learning environment in which children and adults are taught how to understand, talk about and handle the mental-health and well-being of themselves and others.

 

Oracy

The ability to speak articulately, confidently and precisely in a range of contexts is a vital skill for lifelong learning, for successfully developing your career and for accessing a range of institutions and agencies in your future. Oracy is a golden thread through our curriculum and all children are encouraged to discuss, debate, reason and perform across every subject. We intend for pupils to develop their skills and confidence in speaking in front of a range of audiences across a range of subjects and for a range of purposes, developing skills planned in a progressive and structured curriculum.   

 

Poetry:

Poetry involves imagination and feelings and helps us to make sense of the world. It is a creative and cultural activity, providing an opportunity for pupils to explore the world, people from other places, times and cultures, and to examine differences and similarities with their own environment. We intend for pupils to deepen their understanding of language and enrich learning in subjects across the curriculum through reading, understanding and reciting poetry in a progressive, planned and aspirational poetry curriculum.

 

Performing Arts:

At Redhill, we pride ourselves on building and developing our pupils' confidence and their ability to express themselves through the arts. Performance is integral to our curriculum and we ensure every child has several opportunities throughout each academic year to perform in front of an audience, either in person or via a range of media, and for children to develop their singing, dancing, public speaking and much more. We intend for our pupils to learn through, from and about literature, art, dance and music from a wide range of times and voices.

 

Enterprise skills and Community Links:

Enterprise education is the practice of helping to develop the skills and attitudes we most closely associate with being enterprising or entrepreneurial. As part of this we teach children about budgeting, profit, loss and running a business. However, being enterprising is about more than this, it is about children having a positive and resilient mindset, being able to use their initiative, problem solving and working as a team. We intend that opportunities for meaningful enterprise activities focusing on the Redhill S.E.C.R.E.T. to success qualities are embedded in our curriculum and make contributions to local, national and international communities and organisations.

 

Sport

Our pupils are passionate about sport and we want to consistently capitalise on this passion and provide them with the opportunities to compete, demonstrate and progress their skills in a range of competitions and events across the region. We intend to provide a wide-range of inspiring and inclusive sporting opportunities, both through the delivery of high quality PE lessons and extra-curricular clubs and competitive sport.

Our Enrichment

Education is more than just mastering English and maths - it's also about activities that extend children's learning through new experiences and opportunities. Therefore, we are constantly seeking out new ways to enhance our teaching and to provide our pupils with the most exciting school experience we can.

 

Storybook Curriculum

The carefully planned school's skills based, thematic curriculum, ensures all aspects of the new national curriculum programmes of study are taught and provides a wealth of enrichment and extra-curricular activities. Strong links between subjects and enterprise projects have been established, which provide a wealth of opportunities for pupils to apply key literacy and numeracy skills across the curriculum and in real-life contexts. 

 

School Trips

To enhance the school curriculum and enrich the children's learning experiences, we arrange trips to places of interest for each class at least once a year. Many trips are organised to link with the topics studied by the children that term. Typical examples of school trips are: visits to museums and art galleries; visits to a variety of places of worship such as the church, gurdwara, mosque or synagogue; visits to Cadbury’s World or the Sea Life Centre. Other trips may be arranged to develop a particular skill, for example visits to the local sports events.

 

The safety of pupils on school trips is, of course, paramount and a full risk assessment is carried out prior to any trip. As part of the risk assessment, teachers are expected, where possible, to visit the location before the visit takes place. If any aspect of the trip presents an unacceptable risk then it will not go ahead.  All risk assessments are approved by the leadership team. Qualified first-aid trained staff accompany pupils on school trips.

 

We rely on voluntary contributions from parents to enable these trips to take place.  We do try to keep the cost of trips down and always consider value for money when selecting places of interest/learning to visit.

 

Residential

Every year after SATs, our year 6 class visits Kingswood for a two night residential. Whilst there, they undertake several exciting, adventurous activities including abseiling, archery, assault courses, laser tag, zip wires and much more. They spend their nights in dormitories with their friends and always have an incredible experience which is consistently a highlight of their final year at the school.

 

Performances

We undertake two main dramatic performances each year at Redhill. Before Christmas, our KS1 and EYFS classes work together to rehearse and perform a special Christmas play for the children and parents in the school. In summer, our year 6 class, supported by all of the other classes in KS2, stage a special play to mark the end of the year. Both of these performances are consistently spectacular and receive a fantastic response from the audience. They are also vital for showcasing the amazing talent of the children in our school and showing them the amount of work that goes in to putting on a successful public performance.

 

Every class also individually holds a class assembly each year in which they perform for their parents and the rest of the school. These assemblies link to the class’ current topic and usually include acting, singing and dancing.

 

Enterprise

We believe that the most successful educational experiences have a real life context and, consequently, every class takes part in a special enterprise event each year during our 'Enterprising' focus half term. These are designed and planned by the class teachers under the children's guidance to allow children an opportunity to plan and organise a profit-making event for the school where they make and sell goods or provide a service. Children are involved in every stage of the event organisation so that they get real, practical experience of planning and budgeting for a specific goal.

 

Clubs

Here at Redhill Primary School we like to keep pupils active and engaged at all times, including lunchtimes and after-school. We run many extra-curricular clubs for pupils throughout the year. We also regularly consult pupils on the clubs they would like to be offered. To see what clubs we are currently offering, take a look at our Clubs page on the website.

 

Visitors

We regularly enjoy visitors in school. These may be people working within the community, such as police officers, or occasional visitors such as authors. Often parents and carers with a particular skill will come into school to share their expertise. Last year, we were visited by our local MP, Pauline Latham, who taught our school council members all about life as an MP and what it is like in the Houses of Parliament.

 

Outdoor learning

Children love to be outside and, where appropriate, we are providing opportunities for children to learn outdoors so that they can put their learning in context. In maths for example, measuring becomes more real if pupils are measuring real life objects and distances.

 

Cycling and Swimming

Every year, our year 6 class undertakes a comprehensive Bikeability scheme to safely prepare them and train them for cycling at home and out on the local streets.

 

Our Year 4 class attends the West Park Leisure centre once a week for swimming lessons with qualified instructors. In the final half term of each year, our year 6 class attends the leisure centre for a final assessment of their swimming abilities.