Curriculum Map

Halifax Primary School aims to provide opportunities for children to develop as independent, confident, successful learners with high aspirations who have a thirst for gaining new knowledge and skills.  We focus on encouraging children to work collaboratively and tailor our curriculum so it is engaging, but most of all, we choose topics pupils relate to.

At Halifax, we welcome children with different backgrounds, and we ensure our curriculum is highly inclusive so all children, including those who have additional needs, enjoy their education and make good progress in all subjects.  Our curriculum is flexible so staff members adjust the content to ensure we challenge and inspire learners but also ensure all children progress from their starting point.

Our curriculum has been designed to ensure coverage and progression with careful consideration as to what has been successful in the past. We aim to provide pupils with memorable experiences and those, which will raise aspiration; engage children and help staff to provide the children with opportunities which encourage them to want to learn and motivate them in their future lives.

Our aim is to provide children with life-long skills and to this end; we actively promote and teach children Oracy skills.  Opportunities are planned throughout the curriculum to engage children in discussion, reasoning and public speaking.  Vocabulary is explicitly taught in all subjects to extend their ability to be effective and engaging communicators.  All staff encourage the use of Oracy skills, such as at playtime and during extracurricular activities. In addition, our whole school and phase assemblies are opportunities to model and support children to apply these important skills.

Through developing Oracy skills, we encourage our children to be reflective learners and encourage pupils to articulate what has made them successful in their learning and how they can improve further. We encourage this discussion and reflection in all subjects, assemblies, and other interactions within the school, such as school council meetings, play leaders, librarian work and quality of education reviews.

We pride ourselves on the trips and experiences we give to children in all year groups.  Trips are mapped out alongside the whole school curriculum to ensure they are purposeful whilst giving our pupils a wide range of opportunities. They include:

- Reception –Allotments, the library, and the community gardens; a visiting zoo

- Year 1 – Navigating the local area and Bourne Park, Felixstowe Beach, Jimmy’s Farm

- Year 2 –The Easter experience at Stoke Green Baptist Church, Foxburrow Farm and Ipswich Fire station

- Year 3 – The Christmas experience at Stoke Green Baptist Church, The Stone Age Visitor and Colchester Castle

- Year 4 – West Stow, The O2 for Young Voices, Botanical Gardens or Jimmy’s Farm and Hallowtree

- Year 5 – London (Residential), Walking tour of Ipswich

- Year 6 – Duxford, Hallowtree – River Orwell Study, Crucial crew and a residential depending on their previous experiences through the school.

Providing opportunities for children to shine is a particular passion and strength of Halifax Primary School.  We support children learning their own instrument and alongside our own music specialist, we have developed a music curriculum which delivers effective and engaging music lessons.  This high-quality music teaching culminates in a termly ‘Musical Extravaganza’ where every child has the opportunity to perform to the school as well as those who are learning instruments in and out of school to perform in small groups or as a soloist.  Children work collaboratively and the Ukulele group also perform. We are very proud of the how many children we have engaged in music.

We also pride ourselves on giving an opportunity for EVERY child to participate in an extracurricular club. We have clubs running every day after school plus lunchtimes. We have ukulele club and cookery club running all year round.  In addition, some of our pupils are currently planning and leading a computing club for our younger pupils, which is supported by our computing lead. We have a wide range of sports clubs including: multi-skills, cricket, gymnastics, dodge ball, football (girls and boys), basketball and archery. Children are encouraged to participate in competitions and Halifax is proud that we run development squads to also represent our school.

School and subject leaders play an important part in monitoring the success of the curriculum by being involved in a regular programme of monitoring, evaluation and review which is done through our quality of education reviews.  These involve dropping into lessons and speaking with pupils whilst looking at their work to ascertain how their knowledge and understanding has developed in different subjects.  Based on the outcomes of reviews and on-going evaluation, staff are then involved in suggesting adjustments to the curriculum. Due to the curriculum that we have designed, we have ensured engagement from all children and found a variety of ways for children to demonstrate their understanding, including opportunities to apply their oracy skills. Children have presented to parents and other children; used ICT to create programmes; written information booklets and PowerPoint presentations; created group brochures and posters; as well as being inspired to write high-quality creative and factual pieces of writing.  Enjoyment of the curriculum helps our children to achieve and grow in confidence.

Curriculum Drivers

We used our curriculum drivers, which are closely linked to our whole school values, to develop and continue to refine our curriculum.

Inclusivity and Diversity (Nurture) – We ensure lessons and resources are adapted so all children can access our high-quality curriculum. The content and delivery of the curriculum is reviewed annually to ensure that it is appropriate for each cohort. Through texts studied, experiences given, and significant people explored, we provide experiences based on a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds.

Possibilities  (Aspiration) – Through the sharing of high quality work and well-defined end points, we support and guide pupils to have the highest expectations of themselves. We provide opportunities for children to apply numeracy, literacy and oracy skills to continually raise standards.

Oracy (Collaboration) – Children are expected to discuss and work together across the curriculum and the curriculum is designed to provide opportunities daily for children to work collaboratively.

Community (Curiosity) – We endeavour to extend learning opportunities and make it relevant to our learners by using our local community to enhance learning opportunities within school and encourage children to attend clubs externally which will continue to extend and develop their learning,