Curriculum Overview
Eastwood Village Primary – Curriculum Overview
Our curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced to ensure pupils recall and articulate knowledge confidently for their future learning and, ultimately, employment; the amount of consistent progress made by pupils across the school supports this. Teachers are consistently and effectively challenged, coached and supported by senior or more experienced teachers from within the school or wider Hub of Schools. Half termly assessments prove the majority of children are making at least expected termly progress; pupil progress meetings and moderation activities allow for detailed interventions to be put in place to support vulnerable groups of learners.
The curriculum has been designed specifically to support pupils to know and remember more and in foundation, to do, know and remember more. We have use latest educational research to promote effective working memory and retrieval of information in the way our curriculum is designed. All aspects of the curriculum have been designed with progression in mind, to ensure children build on existing skills and knowledge, which enables them to make links to new learning more easily and commit this knowledge to their long-term memories. We ensure we have vertical links (substantive concepts) which run through a subject and support our pupils in building their schema, horizontal links (for example in Y5 pupils study Africa in Geography and Mansa Musa and the Mali Empire in History) which ensure our pupils have prior knowledge and can access a range of subjects. We see first hand the effect of these links in supporting our pupil’s knowledge retention with diagonal links (links across subjects, concepts and year groups) for example pupils learn about Muslim celebrations and Eid (FS), create patterns using prayer mats as a stimulus in art (KS1), identify and explore the five pillars of Islam in RE (LKS2), learn about Mansa Musa’s famous pilgrimage to Mecca in (UKS2) and study an ancient Islamic civilization in (UKS2). These diagonal links and pupils good understanding reflects clear substantive concepts (Religion) which runs through our history curriculum.
Subject leaders share a common and consistent approach to planning, monitoring and evaluating their subject. In doing so, they are able to confidently ensure that all staff have a firm and common understanding of the school’s curriculum intent and what this means for their own practice- see Subject Leader Governor Reports
Where appropriate, the curriculum is adapted, designed or developed in light of newly blended learning opportunities to remain ambitious and aspirational for those with EAL, SEND and other vulnerable pupils. Well-trained additional adults ensure, through small-group teaching, that all vulnerable pupils attain well, have the opportunity to catch up for lost learning as a result of the Pandemic and make good progress from their starting points.
The curriculum is studied in full and is predominantly based on the National Curriculum (NC). The school is active in meeting the Arts Mark criteria and has accessed a local community Fund to enable local artists to work with pupils across the school. Subject leaders base their monitoring and evaluation on a highly developed progression of skills for each subject – for class teachers this ensures that progression and continuity is built into the intentions. The areas of learning from the EYFS are mapped against the NC subjects for KS1 and KS2 and subjects are identified as either ‘curriculum drivers’ or ‘discrete subjects’, with some subjects arranged to be taught in blocks of time. A recent timetable adaption has been adopted in KS2 to enable pupils to be taught by curriculum specialists. This initiative is already proving successful to enable the range of subjects to be taught proficiently.
Please find below a summary overview of our school curriculum including topics (green=geography driver and yellow = history driver), science focus, high-quality novels and story time texts (chosen to give our pupils access to the ‘5 plagues of reading’).
Autumn 1 | Autumn 2 | Spring 1 | Spring 2 | Summer 1 | Summer 2 | |
Foundation Stage A | All About me | Celebrations | Superheroes | Minibeasts | Inventions | Seaside |
Foundation Stage B | All About me | Celebrations | Magical | Gardening | Farm | Space |
Foundation Stage Reads A | Owl Babies
Goldilocks and the Three Bears What I Like About Me |
Kipper’s Birthday
Santa Comes to Rotherham
|
Superworm
Nat Fantastic Eliot Jones Midnight Superhero
|
Mad About Minibeasts
Very Hungry Caterpillar
|
No Bot
Boy and Bot Monster Dumper Truck |
Pirates Love Underpants
Commotion in the Ocean Sharing a shell |
Foundation Stage Reads B | Owl Babies
Goldilocks and the Three Bears What I Like About Me |
Kipper’s Birthday
Santa Comes to Rotherham
|
Room on the Broom
|
Jack and the Beanstalk
The Enormous Turnip |
Farmyard Hullabaloo
|
Whatever Next…
Aliens Love Underpants |
Foundation Stage Story Time Text | Owl Babies
(Complexity of Plot) |
Jack and the Beanstalk
(Archaic Text) |
The Tiger Who Came to Tea
(Complexity of Plot) |
Billy Goats Gruff
(Archaic Text) |
Not Now, Bernard
(Resistant Text) |
The True Story of Big Bad Wolf
(Complexity of the narrator) |
Year 1 Topics | All about me – Toys
|
Gunpowder Plot | Seasons | Our Country | Dinosaurs and Mary Anning
|
Pirates
(Maps and field work) |
Year 1 Science | Humans
|
Materials | Seasonal Changes | Plants | Animals | Minibeasts |
Year 1 Studied Texts | Funny Bones | Stick man | Lost and Found | Gruffalo | Harry and the Bucket full of dinosaurs | Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch |
Year 1 Story Time Text | The Day the Crayons Quit
(Complexity of the narrator) |
Ning Nang Nong
(Resistant texts) |
The Cat in the Hat
(Archaic Text) |
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (Non-linear text) | Dinosaurs and All That Rubbish
(Complexity of plot/ symbol) |
And the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon
(Complexity of the narrator) |
Year 2 Topics | Off to the Seaside
(Geographical features) |
The Black Death | Bear Grylls
(Maps and Weather) |
Queens
Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Elizabeth II |
The World | Castles
Conisborough Castle |
Year 2 Science | Human Body | Materials | Animals | Habitats | Plants | Experiments and Investigations |
Year 2 Studied Texts | Meerkat Mail | The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark | Gorilla | Who’s afraid of the big bad book? | Dr Xargle’s book of Earthlets | Traction man is here |
Year 2 Story Time Text | Traditional Stories
(Archaic Text) |
After the Storm
(Complexity of plot/ symbol) |
Where the Wild Things Are
(Complexity of plot/ symbol) |
The Colour Monster
(Resistant text) |
Voices in the Park
(Non-Linear) |
Fantastic Mr Fox
(Complexity of narrator) |
Year 3 Topics | Our Local Area | Our Neighbours (Europe) | The First Men
(Stone Age) |
Iron Age | Extreme Earth | Romans |
Year 3 Science | Plants | Light | Rocks | Animals including Humans | Forces and Magnets | Experiments and Investigations |
Year 3 Studied Texts | The Tunnel | The Last Wolf | Lost Happy Endings | Leon and the Place Between | Billy and the Minpins | Sheep Pig |
Year 3 Story Time Text | The Case of the Lost Boy
(Complexity of the narrator) |
The Little Match Girl
(Archaic text) |
Revolting Rhymes
(Complexity of plot/ symbol) |
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick
(Resistant text) |
The Midnight Fox
(Non-linear time sequence) |
|
Year 4 Topics | Steely Sheffield | Wonderful Water – River Study | Scots, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings | Ancient Egypt | Remarkable Rainforests | |
Year 4 Science | Living things and their Habitats | States of Matter | Animals, including humans
|
Sound
|
Electricity
|
|
Year 4 Studied Texts | Legend of Podkin One-Ear
(Non-Linear and narratively complex) |
The Accidental Prime Minister | Iron Man
(Complexity of plot/ symbolic) |
|||
Year 4 Story Time Text | The Firework Makers Daughter
(Non-Linear narrative) |
Winnie the Pooh
AA Milne (Archaic Text) |
One Dog and His Boy | |||
Year 5 Topics | Mansa Musa – The Mali Empire | Africa | Tudors | The UK | Explorers | Ancient Greece |
Year 5 Science | States of Matter | Living things and their Habitats | Animals including Humans | Forces | Experiments and Investigations | Earth and Space |
Year 5 Studied Texts | Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
(Complexity of plot/ symbolic) |
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
(Archaic Text) |
Who Let the Gods Out?
(Complexity of plot/ symbolic) |
|||
Year 5 Story Time Text | A Christmas Carol
(Non-Linear/ Archaic) |
Butterfly Lion
(Non-Linear) |
The Arrival
(Resistant Text) |
|||
Year 6 Topics | Victorians | Frozen Kingdoms | World War 2 | Ancient Islamic Civilization | Coasts | Amazing Art (Secondary School Transition) |
Year 6 Science | Electricity | Living Things and their Habitats | Animals including Humans | Evolution and Inheritance | Light | |
Year 6 Studied Texts | Street Child
(Complexity of plot/ symbolic) |
War Horse
(Complexity of narrator) |
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
(Complexity of plot/ symbolic) |
|||
Year 6 Story Time Text | Oliver Twist
(Archaic Text) |
Holes
(Non-Linear Text) |
Jabberwocky
If The Highway Man (Resistant texts) |