Curriculum

• Physical Education
• Art & Design
• Music
• ICT
• Geography
• History
• Mathematics
• Science
• English
• Religious Education
• Personal, Social, Health/Sex Education
• Drama

This area of the curriculum fosters a positive attitude towards a healthy lifestyle, co-ordination and body control.  Participation in all physical education activities helps children to develop self esteem and interpersonal skills.

Physical Education is a compulsory subject and all children are expected to participate fully.

Children are encouraged to use their local environment especially the forest to enable them to develop an awareness of shape, colour, texture and pattern as well as understand the properties of materials.

Art provides children with a spiritual dimension to their learning, enhancing their imagination and intensifying their feelings.

Some materials that children work with are fabric, paint, charcoal, crayon, ink, pastel, pencil, acrylics, wood, clay, dyes.  Many activities such as painting, drawing, collage, model making, close observation work, tie dying, printing, sewing, knitting and weaving are covered.

Children’s artwork is mounted and displayed in classrooms and halls around the school.  This may be linked with a topic being studied or seasonal/festival work.  The school also prides itself on its annual Arts Exhibition which is a good forum for exemplary work.

We are fortunate in being able to use art galleries in London and including the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery and The Tate Gallery where trained staff in the galleries work with groups of children.

The school has a large collection of reproductions to introduce children to works of art, representing many artists plus art from different cultures and eras.

• Performing and Composing
• Listening and Appraising

This is achieved by playing and singing, performing with others, composing and arranging, listening to and apprising musical styles, from all cultures, developing a sense of pitch, timbre, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, developing ideas of notation and using music as a means of self expression and a source of pleasure.

There is opportunity for all children to learn to play the recorder in year 4 and currently parents have the choice of paying for individual music lessons for violin, brass and clarinet as part of the schools’ charging policy.

Children are taken to music appreciation concerts, where possible and occasionally live performers come to the school.  Music plays an important part in celebrations, assemblies and entertain, to which parents are invited.

• 15 up to date computers
• Internet and e-mail on every computer
• Networked scanner
• Digital cameras
• A multimedia projector and screen – this allows teachers to give large screen demonstrations
• Desk PC’s and laptops in every classroom

Children follow the QCA Schemes of work for ICT on a two year planning cycle.  Each unit introduces new aspects of ICT, building on earlier units.

The main areas of study are:

• Finding things out
• Developing ideas through multimedia
• Developing ideas and making things happen

Children are provided with opportunities to practise the skills they have learnt, and to apply their knowledge in a range of contexts across the curriculum.

At Key Stage 1 children study the school locality.  Comparisons are made between this area and Clacton.  Fieldwork investigations are carried out during a visit to Clacton and regular visits are made to the local surrounding area.

Children are taught through an on-going theme entitled ‘Where in the world is Barney Bear?’ Other localities such as Dublin, Wales and France are explored.  The bear character is taken on holiday with pupils and teachers to interesting destinations and photographed there giving children experience of the wider world.

Children also consider the features of an island home and compare the village of Greendale with the city of Edinburgh.

At Key Stage 2 children study the locality of the school, a contrasting locality in the U.K. and countries beyond the U.K. including a village in India.

Further study is made of the school locality which is compared with Greenwich and later studies with a link to a history theme based on Victoria Britain. 

Field study visits are made to a local river as part of work involving investigating rivers and water.

Children learn about the features and locations of mountain environments together with the impact of tourism and the effects of weather upon them.

The study of settlements has cross curricular links to history when invaders and settlers are taught.

Children learn about significant places and environments in the U.K., Europe and the wider world.

Skills such as following directions, map reading (including use of desk maps, o.s.c.p, Roms, maps of different scales, map detectives, computer software).  Map making are covered as are weather observations, surveys and data collection.

Globes, CD ROMS, videos, pictures, aerial photographs, photographs, stories, information texts, artefacts, the internet, satellite images are resources used to enhance our work.

At Key Stage 2 children are challenged further regarding their investigative and deductive skills.  They are given opportunities to research, look at evidence, and argue for their point of view.

Pupils undertake an overview study of how British society was shaped by the movement and settlements of different peoples in the period before the Roman Conquest including an in-depth study of how British society was affected by Roman settlement.

A European history study explores life in Ancient Greece.

Children compare their local surroundings to that of Greenwich and how each area has changed over a long period of time.  Tudor life is studies and includes a study of some significant events and individuals, who shaped this period and of the everyday lives of people from different sections of society.

Britain since 1930 focuses on the impact of the second world war.

Victorian Britain is studied as part of a local history study.  Children experience a variety of visits to museums and places of special interest, they use artefacts, photographs, video programmes, books and IT.

Above all the programme of study is centred around knowledge, skills and understanding.

We work within the Numeracy Strategy framework which covers four areas – Using and Applying Mathematics, Number and Algebra, Shape, Space and Measures and Handling Data.

We aim to help children understand the processes and strategies involved in mathematics by presenting a range of experiences.  Children need to practice mathematical skills regularly and, to facilitate this, supplementary materials are used to provide children with investigative experiences.  They become involved in class group, paired and individual activities, progressing at different individual rates.  A published mathematics scheme (Collins) is used to support the teaching of mathematics throughout the school but it is not used exclusively and various other published materials are also used.

• Experimental and Investigative Science
• Life and Living Processes
• Materials their Properties
• Physical Processes

Our aim is to help children increase their knowledge of the world and to develop the skills of observation, recording, analysis and interpretation through scientific investigations.  We encourage the children to devise ‘the fiar test’ and introduce basic scientific methods with due regard for curiosity, healthy scepticism, and critical evaluation.

Every class visits Epping Forest on a termly basis.

Children enter school at different stages of development of their English skills.  We aim to develop these skills so that each child becomes an increasingly confident and proficient language user.

Speaking and Listening Skills are developed in a variety of settings and throughout all curriculum areas to encourage communication in purposeful, clear and orderly dialogue that is appropriate for a range of occasions and purposes and which invites careful, sympathetic and responsive listening.

Reading has a very high status within the school and we seek to create fluent, discerning, life-long readers who value books.

We actively involve parents in the processes of reading and acknowledge the role of parents in the development of reading.  We encourage parents and children to enjoy reading and sharing books together.  Where this a regular practice children make significant progress and we place a great importance on having a wide range and variety of quality books available around the school and in the library.  Reading is a regular part of the daily Literacy Hour.  Children read all together, in small groups, in pairs and along, and they are encouraged to discuss books and make choices about their reading.

We aim to help develop the literacy skills of reading with enjoyment, become familiar with ‘book language’, be able to use prediction skills and retrieval skills with books as a source of knowledge.

We aim to encourage children to recognise the skills they have acquired already at a very early stage and help them understand that writing is a purposeful and meaningful activity by adult examples as well as direction.

We actively encourage children to ‘have a go’ and then with skilful teacher input and intervention we work through the recognised stages of development to achieve standard written English.  Spelling and punctuation are developed gradually in the context of children’s writing.

Spelling is taught systematically within the Literacy Hour, and parents are encouraged to help their children learn spellings on a weekly basis.

As they develop, children are encouraged to see writing as a powerful means of self expression and communication and to write for a range of purposes and different audiences.

We believe that good content is essential and we encourage careful preparation to produce interesting content and good quality presentation.

Handwriting is recognised as a skill which can only be improved by children are firstly taught to form letter shapes correctly and then to use the Berol style of joined handwriting.

Children are encouraged through Information Technology to develop and extend word processing skills in order to have alternative formats for the presentation of their work at their disposal.

Religious Education
Although we are a Christian school it is acknowledged that we are members of a pluralistic, multi-cultural society and we seek to develop an understanding of and respect for all religious beliefs.  At KS2 the teaching of religious education is primarily through our curricular topic work and the celebration of festivals for the six major world faiths, these being:

• Christianity

• Islam

• Hinduism

• Sikhism

• Judasism

• Buddhism

At KS2 there is a particular focus on Christianity, Hinduism and Judasism.  The aim of Religious Education is to help children to achieve a knowledge and understanding of religious beliefs, insights and practices, so that they re able to continue in, or come to, their own beliefs and respect the right of other people to hold beliefs different to their own. 

The religious education provided at the school follows the R.E.  Agreed Syllabus adopted by the LEA

Personal, Social, Health/Sex Education
These are key aspects in the preparation of children for their lives now and as adults and, possibly, parents in the future.

It is hoped that the ethos of the school – which emphasises a caring and considerate atmosphere – develops respect for the individual, values achievements of everyone and encourages attitudes which enable children to make a positive contribution to, and live harmoniously with others in the community.

PSHE is also taught during circle time on a Wednesday using five main themes that are reinforced in Assembly.

At appropriate times, opportunities are provided for responding to the needs of others by supporting charities and appeals both local and international.