Policy for Curriculum Planning

To safeguard children's entitlement to a broad, balanced and purposeful curriculum, which includes the Foundation Stage Curriculum, the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies, the National Curriculum and the RE Curriculum as set down in Living Difference.

To ensure that the planning and delivery of the curriculum is meaningful, flexible and relevant to children's changing interests, needs and experiences.

To ensure equality of opportunity, provision and experiences for children within and across year groups.

The six areas of the Foundation Stage Curriculum are used as the basis for curriculum planning across the whole school. The sex areas enable teachers and children to make interesting and purposeful links between subjects and provide a flexible and creating scaffold for planning topic based units of work.

The key stage map which includes the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 provides a long-term curriculum overview. Schemes of work from discrete subjects in KS1 are colour coded to show breadth, coverage, continuity and progression. This map is reviewed annually.

The Numeracy strategy provides the long-term planning model for mathematics in KS1, but mathematical objectives are also applied and revisited in cross-curricular contexts.

We do not use the National Literacy strategy as a planning tool for the delivery of the English curriculum (please see the school's Policy for Literacy).

Staff work together in year groups to design cross-curricular units of work for the following term. These units will be of differing length and will usually identify one of the six areas of learning as their key focus. Key learning skills and thinking skills are also identified at this stage.

The process begins with a mind-map or brainstorm which is then refined and formalised into a published planning document which defines learning objectives, resources and appropriate learning outcomes for each curriculum area. Resource implications are noted and dealt with at this stage.

Mid-term planning is revisited each year and while the learning objectives remain largely the same, the contexts and methods used for their delivery may change in order to reflect the needs, interests and experiences of each new cohort.

At the start of each half-term, a synopsis of the curriculum is produced in leaflet form, and this is sent home to parents in order to involve them directly in their child's learning and to give them opportunities to contribute to it.

Copies of mid-term planning are given to the Headteacher and made available to all staff.

Weekly planning is drawn directly from the mid-term planning document and year group staff work together to identify the specific learning experiences for the coming week. Differentiated activities and outcomes are planned in detail at this stage and opportunities for teacher assessment are integrated into the planning. Planning for the coming week will always take account of the progress made by the children in the previous week, in order to properly meet the needs of groups and individuals. This also applies to daily planning which is directly informed by an ongoing process of assessment and review.

Short-term planning is viewed as 'work in progress' and is not necessary or appropriate for it to be published. Specific resources, space or timetable implications should be negotiated in advance by the staff concerned.