Curriculum Information
Shafton Primary Academy Curriculum
Finding Our Remarkable
Shafton Primary Academy is a dynamic and vibrant school, full of character, love and life. It provides a very high standard of education as well a range of wonderful experiences through our inclusive curriculum which includes every child.
It is a school full of warmth, energy and enthusiasm where children feel nurtured, happy and valued. This calm, purposeful atmosphere is palpable the moment you step into the environment. We pride ourselves in having a committed staff team who are relentless in their drive to offer a curriculum which is broad and challenging. Expectations are high and children are motivated to ‘Find Their Remarkable’. All children work as hard as they can – it is our norm.
Our curriculum has been designed by our whole school family – teachers, children and the community. Our children tell us what they enjoy learning, we have listened to our community and our curriculum reflects local history and community values.
Our curriculum lives and breathes our core values. These values are shared with our whole AET family.
Be unusually brave
Discover what’s possible
Push the limits
Be big hearted
For all our learning, our starting point is the National Curriculum 2014 which ensures that our outcomes are up to high National standards. However, we deliver the content of the National Curriculum in a way which allows our children to learn in creative and richly engaging environments where they can develop independence and work together. This allows them to find a love of learning in everything they do.
Our school curriculum is carefully designed to ensure coverage and progression through exciting, broad and balanced learning experiences. The curriculum provides pupils with memorable experiences, in addition to diverse and rich opportunities from which children can learn and develop a range of transferable skills.
All planning builds upon prior learning to ensure that every child achieves. Pupils know the purpose for their learning, how to refine their work, the links between the subjects or themes and the relevance of these to their everyday lives.
As an AET school, we have a solid, traditional, core curriculum which follows the ‘Mastery Flow’ model. Alongside this runs our Character Curriculum which we call ‘The AET Pupil’.
What is ‘The AET Pupil’?
‘The AET pupil’ is a character curriculum and works alongside academic knowledge and skills. It signs posts the competences and skills needed to thrive in the modern world.
It supports our passion for academic excellence and empowers pupils to access academic knowledge and skills with greater confidence.
‘The AET pupil’ enables children to launch their remarkable lives. ‘The AET pupil’ celebrates timeless skills, transferable skills, the skills that do not rely on subject, context or job.
It reminds us why we entered the world of education why we become teachers and reminds us of if critically important, to prepare pupils for their future.
The AET pupil character curriculum is underpinned by 3 elements:
1. Identify their remarkable – A character framework
2. Grow their remarkable – Remarkable experiences
3. Celebrate their remarkable – Pupil celebration book to capture their remarkable
At Shafton Primary Academy, we help our children ‘Find Their Remarkable’ by giving them opportunities to develop confidence and responsibility, to work in teams and lead, to speak, think and grow their personality. This will enable them to move on from Shafton Primary with the behaviours and skills to support them for the rest of their lives.
At Shafton Primary Academy, we help our children ‘Grow Their Remarkable’ by giving those experiences which that will excite them, please them and fill them with awe and wonder. Would you like to build a den, perform on stage, look after a pet, have a picnic, answer the phone, play an instrument, hug a tree! I know I would!
At Shafton Primary Academy, we help our children ‘Celebrate Their Remarkable’ by creating a collection of awards, certificates, photographs, stickers and prizes which showcase Our Remarkable Lives.
Subject Information can also be found on our Subjects web page.
Literacy -
We have a traditional approach to literacy learning whereby children have lessons in spelling, grammar, handwriting and reading comprehension. Twice a week, the children in Y1-6 write a longer piece of writing based on a variety of things from traditional story-telling, to instructional, to persuasive adverts and non-fiction non-chronological reports. Learning is always driven by what the children need to do next in order to get better and better! We make Literacy fun and you will see the teachers writing as much as the children as they guide learning through shared writes, modelled texts and interactive marking. Our writing is based on the principles of 'Talk For Writing' - but we have developed our own style, where children and teachers write together and edit and improve their work as a team.
The Shafton Reading River -
As reading continues to play a central role in our academy's curriculum, we are pleased to announce that we are adopting a ‘literacy cannon’ reading model.
Our literacy cannon will be named 'The Shafton Reading River', which will provide each class with a minimum of 6 books, that they will read and explore together! This may be through drama-led learning, art or writing. We want children to leave our school knowing a selection of texts in depth- and loving them! Each year group will have a Reading River overview published on their class page.
Phonics-
We use Oxford Reading Tree as our reading scheme and our phonics work is based on Read Write Ink. All children have access to individual reading books, the class library and the school library. Parents join in with reading at home with their children and all children have a reading diary so that home and school can link closely together. Read Write Ink is group based and each group will have tailored books and sight words to learn each week.
Resilient Reader -
Our mission is to give every child the power to become a Resilient Reader. We inspire our children to read through the use of Resilient Reader techniques. Created by Jacob Mitchell, Resilient Reader encourages the children to use the reading power of their left and right hand.
The left hand is used to summarise the text and ensures that the children have not ‘left’ anything out. The children use their left hand to skim the text and find the Who? What? Where? When? and Why? of the text.
Once the children are able to summarise securely they use their right hand to find the answers they need. If they use the right hand the answers will be ‘right’. The right hand is used to scan the text so that the children can find answers, explain, use inference, predict what might happen next and compare elements of the text.
Resilient Reader techniques are used from Foundation Stage to Year 6 as an integral part of our Reading Curriculum.
Maths - we follow our Academy scheme of work for maths and there is a link to more information about it here
We have developed our Maths Curriculum in conjunction with the AET 'Mastery Flow' model based around a 5 part approach to conceptual fluency:
Representation - Fluency - Probing Questions - Reasoning - Richer tasks
Our pupils love maths and rapid and attainment is very high.
History and Geography -
We follow our Ark curriculum for History, Geography and Science
We make this subject as lively and hands on as possible as we believe that if subjects come to life, children will remember them. In History, for example, we dress up and role-play about famous people from the past. We invite visitors into school and we go out on trips and visits.
Art and DT - We follow Kapow across all year groups. We also have a specialist TA to support with our Art activities and ideas.
PE - We strongly believe that activity, team work and fair play are the foundations of so many things in life, building towards a happy, healthy and active future as adults. We use PE Hub across the whole school.
Music - Our music curriculum inspires our children to take up piano, key board, drums, guitar and individual singing tuition as well as to perform in concerts and plays both in school and out in our community. Teachers use Kapow to help structure the music lessons. We also have whole school singing assemblies.