General Overview
At Biscovey Nursery and Infants’ Academy we aim to ensure that all children can develop the skills they need to become happy and confident learners who, with guidance and support, can reach their full potential.
Our curriculum ensures that we deliver a range of topics across the age phases which develops sequential learning where pupils know more and can do more, ensuring that they are ready for their next stage in education.
Our nurturing ethos endeavours to support all children and their families. Through this approach we are able to work together to ensure that we meet the needs of all learners in our school.
We pride ourselves on delivering beyond the academic curriculum, developing a child’s individual character. Our core values run through all areas of school life and learning which allows the whole child to develop into a confident and caring young individual. The Biscovey child shows respect, and through self-belief and courage approaches learning with an inquisitive mind.
‘With strong roots we learn and grow together’
The Curriculum Intent
At Biscovey Nursery and Infants’ Academy every pupil has the best start through an ambitious curriculum. Our mission is to ensure that every child has access to the best start in education and not be disadvantaged by any factor in their life. Our curriculum offer is specifically designed and enriched with cultural capital to meet the interests of our pupils' background and experience, reflecting the local context and raising aspirations for all.
Reading is placed at the centre of everything that we do here at Biscovey. The curriculum is designed so that every overarching theme is built around a high-quality text, placing reading at the heart of all curriculum planning. This will promote language and vocabulary development of our young learners. Developing enquiry skills is central to the wider curriculum and a key question focuses pupils learning. We aim to build a knowledge rich curriculum, where learning is well sequenced in order for children to know and remember more. We use the WellComm speech and language programme in our Nursery and Reception to support communication and language. This ensures that pupils are targeted early through high quality interventions to support early language development.
We know that consistently great teaching, immersive experiences and a safe happy environment are key to building the foundations for future learning. Learning is arranged under overarching themes which are chosen specifically to meet the interests of our pupils reflecting the background and experience of all. We do this by providing a rich, relevant, and exciting curriculum.
In doing so the children will develop a lifelong love of learning. Developing the love of reading, writing for different purposes, being able to apply their maths skills to real life situations, being able to talk about our learning is at the heart of what we do.
The curriculum is enriched in a variety of ways: trips; visitors; real world contexts; innovative and inspiring experiences; cross-curricular links; purposeful use of the environment and local area.
We believe that knowledge will only become solidly embedded in children's memories when subjects are taught holistically, and links between subjects are made. Whilst ensuring the distinctiveness of National Curriculum objectives are taught, we aim to provide children with joined up experiences, where children are immersed in their learning.
Curriculum Implementation
The curriculum is organised under overarching themes which run through both the Early Years and Key Stage 1.
We aim for children to learn skills alongside knowledge from an early age, ensuring that both are explicitly developed. We believe that this is important for making the curriculum relevant and meaningful to pupils and for putting knowledge into context.
We believe it is our responsibility to develop the literacy and numeracy skills for all our pupils. We use the Talk for Writing approach to teach narrative writing, non-fiction outcomes are linked to curriculum learning. Master the Curricuclum is used in our Nursery to engage and excite our pupils in early Maths. This supports The White Rose scheme of learning which is followed to teach maths in Reception to Year 2. Using the Early Years Foundation Stage Strategy and National Curriculum as a basis, age-appropriate progression in knowledge for each core and foundation subject has been identified. We carefully select the sequence of when, what and how knowledge is taught, and subject leaders work actively to review this aspect regularly. .
Curriculum content is grouped into overarching themes. Each new sequence of learning begins with immersing the children in a high quality text and a ‘wow’ day to launch the topic. Within these themes links are made between subjects and end point outcomes are identified. Throughout the topic formative assessment against pupils’ starting points allows learning to be adapted.
To ensure curriculum quality we have addressed the following:
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Developing language and vocabulary in all subjects
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Developing sequential learning where pupils know more and remember more
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Local context and filling the gaps from pupils’ backgrounds
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Considering depth and breadth and curriculum content
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Ensuring exposure and immersion in high quality texts
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Having clear and focused opportunities for assessment
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A mastery approach
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Listening to the pupil voice
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Clear curriculum leadership and ownership
Curriculum Impact
The impact of the curriculum is monitored through the triangulation of outcomes: pupil voice, data outcomes, planning, monitoring or books, lesson learning walks, discussions with staff, pupils and parents.
Through our carefully planned curriculum and planning progression our children will increasingly become independent learners. The children will display the qualities needed to persevere in order to master new skills, knowledge and concepts. With guidance and support they will be able to reflect on their learning and recognise next steps in order to develop as a learner, so ensuring that they are well prepared for the next stage in their education. Through skilful use of texts they will develop the skills in language to enable them to become confident communicators who can shared ideas effectively. By recognising the whole child in weaving our core values through all we do, our children will be able to recognise emotions, value each other and contribute thoughtfully to our Biscovey family.
