Curriculum

SOUTHMERE CURRICULUM INTENT

The Southmere curriculum supports our Delta Trust vision of: ‘Changing lives’ and our mission statement: ‘To improve educational outcomes for communities in the North of England, creating a sustainable organisation that improves our society and the wider environment.’

 

CURRICULUM AIMS

  1. Improve educational outcomes for all pupils regardless of their starting points.
  2. Develop pupils to become employable, lifelong learners who will be good citizens, developing pupils’ character, their personal dispositions and virtues which guide their conduct. These include responsibility, resilience, respect, eagerness to learn, reflection and cooperation.

 

WIDER CURRICULUM This is designed to give all pupils the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. In order to redress social disadvantage our curriculum reflects the academy context. Typical gaps are in basic skills therefore our broad, rich, balanced curriculum provides a context to apply and practice those skills, particularly in reading and oracy. Our wider curriculum also provides contexts to apply and practice writing and maths knowledge, ideas and operations.

READING across the curriculum. English is not the first language of the vast majority of our pupils, with many pupils new to English, therefore acquisition of language is a priority. Early Years provides a language rich environment with the emphasis on learning to read. KS1 builds on strong phonics and word recognition in EYFS, developing reading fluency. Efficient word reading (automaticity) read with meaningful expression that enhances the meaning of the text (prosody) is key to ensuring our pupils become confident, fluent readers and are able to access the curriculum in KS2. The wider curriculum provides a context for practising reading fluency in KS2.

ORACY work is a feature of our curriculum. The impact of this approach is accelerated language development and deeper understanding of concepts. This is evidenced in strong progress across the academic curriculum. Oracy is also fundamental to the personal development of our pupils.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT Our inclusive curriculum extends beyond the academic. We provide for the personal development of pupils in three main ways: