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Our Key Stage 2 continues to build upon the firm foundations set in EYFS and KS1, equipping our children with the skills and knowledge to be confident at secondary school and develop the responsibilities and experiences to be successful in life.
English will be fully embedded into our E3L themes to provide a wealth of authentic and purposeful opportunities for pupils to develop their literacy skills. In particular, there will be a range of inspirational writing opportunities interwoven into our themes. We have identified the main purposes for writing and organised our curriculum so that we teach text types which share similar features together. For example, the effective use of adjectives can be secured by teaching descriptive poetry and adventure stories during the same half term. The four writing purposes that children will be taught across KS2 are: Writing to Entertain, Writing to Inform, Writing to Persuade and Writing to Discuss. In Key Stage 2 we use increasingly difficult texts in class with more focus on teaching inference and high order reading skills.
Our aim is to equip all pupils with the skills and confidence to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, to reason mathematically and have the ability to solve increasingly sophisticated problems as outlined in the 2014 National Curriculum programmes of study. We aim to increase confidence and deepen understanding in KS2 with an emphasis on building a solid foundation for all pupils before moving on. Our curriculum is designed to allow pupils to learn concepts in greater depth (mastery approach). This means designing sequences of lessons that enable pupils to demonstrate not just that they have superficial knowledge of a concept, but that they can apply their knowledge to increasingly complex situations and can make rich links between different curriculum areas Pupils will need to be independent problem solvers when they learn. They will need to be creative and confident in presenting their reasoning and ideas to others. They will need to know where they are with their learning and what they need to do next to improve their work. We also recognise that spending a short time every day on rapid recall of number facts, such as basic number bonds to five or ten and times table facts, quickly leads to improved fluency.
We have a three-tiered approach to the delivery of Science. Science knowledge is delivered through the E3L themes, some of which are specifically science focused such as ‘Scream Machine’ and ‘Stargazers’. We also place extra emphasis on practical science through additional practical science investigations. These investigations are linked to the E3L themes and develop the skills and vocabulary they need to work independently, with an enquiry-based approach. There are 2/3 investigations per theme and carefully planned on a much more regular basis than most other primary schools. We ensure coverage of the science programme of study across each year group for both the knowledge aspects of science as well as practical investigation types.
In Key Stage 2 our themes continue to offer irresistible learning opportunities through innovative and rich experiences. A theme lasts up to half a term, which the pupils use as a hook to base their learning on. The underpinning philosophy is that they learn better in context than in isolation. Themes cover areas of the National Curriculum, but some themes might be more geography based, while others may contain more drama. By writing the curriculum in this way it allows for stronger experiences and more time to produce high-quality outcomes with more learning impact. In this way there is an opportunity for in-depth learning but with the full curriculum balance across the age phases. Themes have within them certain key activities and outcomes with many opportunities for pupils to have a real audience. For example, a large piece of extended writing such as a piece of diary writing in the ‘Time Traveller’ theme shared with a global audience via an online blog or a recipe in ‘Potions’ that is published and ‘sold’ to families, allows time for developing reading and writing, as well as a wide variety of other key skills that the pupils will develop. The theme ‘Gallery Rebels’ in Year 6 allows pupils to produce a ‘real’ gallery exhibition that is ‘visited’ by families and the community.
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