If you have any questions about our curriculum, please contact the school directly.

Phonics and Reading 

Collins Big Cat Phonics provides complete support for early reading development in Reception and Key Stage One, fully aligned to Letters and Sounds Phases 1-6.  Our children have a secure start to reading with 80+ fully decodable books fully aligned to Letters and Sounds which include:

• Fiction and non-fiction books fully aligned to Letters and Sounds for complete practice of all the required phonemes.
• Exciting topics written by fantastic authors and supported by high-quality illustrations & photographs
• Support for pupils in reaching age-related expectations to support the reading of every book. 

Reading in school

Regular teaching and practice supports early readers through highly decodable books for further practice and development.

Pupils enjoy practising their decoding skills with engaging stories supported by colourful illustrations and photography, accessing fiction readers and non-fiction readers.

In addition to decoding, they practice increasing their fluency skills, comprehension skills and expansd their vocabulary. 

Phonics in school

Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching reading which first teaches the letter sounds and then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of whole words.  Synthetic phonics teaches the phonemes (sounds) associated with the graphemes (letters).

Sounds are taught on their own and  then blended together (this is called synthesising), all-through-the-word. For example, children might be taught a short vowel sound (e.g. /a/e/i/o/u/) in addition to some consonant sounds (e.g. /s/, /t/, /p/). Then the children are taught words with these sounds (e.g. sat, sit, pat, pit, pot, tap, at, it). They are taught to pronounce each phoneme in a word, then to blend the phonemes together to form the word (e.g. /s/ - /i/ - /t/; "sit").

Research evidence has shown that the most effective way to teach phonics is by using one main programme (in our case Collins Big Cat).

We have regular phonic sessions where children learn how to read and write using our phonic knowledge.  

Phonics at home

Spelling in school

Our spelling framework is based upon Appendix 1: Spelling of the English National Curriculum 2014. Each week the pupils are expected to learn a set of spellings based upon a wide range of spelling patterns and common exception words.

More information is below and homework practice can be found under our 'Children' tab and 'Class pages'.

Mathematics in school

Our Mathematics curriculum follows the 2014 National Curriculum.  We use the mastery approach based upon the 5 big ideas, using Power Maths scheme of work:

1. Coherence:  connecting new ideas to concepts already learnt (small steps)
2. Representation & Structure:  representing numbers and concepts in a variety of ways
3. Mathematical thinking: reasoning about maths
4. Fluency: quick & efficient recall of facts
5. Variation: showing a concept to get a sense of what it is and what it is not.

We use an approach so 'everybody can':

• Concrete resources:  'do' the Maths
• Pictorial:  'see' the Maths
• Abstract:  'understand' the Maths

We follow this structure during lessons or over lessons:

• Power up: recall facts fluently
• Discover: use a problem to arouse curiosity and discussion
• Share: highlight new mathematical vocabulary & methods to solver the problem shown in the Discovery section
• Think together:  children work together to practise new learning (I do, We do, You do)
• Strengthen or Deepen: link to real life experiences to reinforce the new learning; challenge their thinking in new ways
• Practice: children work independently
• Reflect: children work to think about their learning; adults assess what children know and can do

Below is a copy of our latest calculation policy for parents. This provides a step by step guide on how we approach the teaching of addition, substraction, multifplication and division.