At Salterforth Primary School, we are committed to providing our children with a broad and ambitious curriculum which stimulates a love of learning and harnesses their natural curiosity. We are ensuring that all areas of the curriculum are driven by our vision to celebrate diversity, inclusivity and personal achievement. We place positivity and the nurturing of our children at the heart of our school and our curriculum is designed to support children to build their self-confidence and develop the whole child.  

We fully implement the National Curriculum 2014 as the base of our teaching and learning. Our curriculum is being designed to consider the needs of all our pupils and to develop their cultural capital so we can give them the best possible start for their futures. We focus not only on the acquisition of academic knowledge and skills but our curriculum is equally weighted towards developing our children’s social and emotional skills. We teach our children to be resilient, independent learners and expose them to a wide range of experiences throughout their Salterforth Primary School journey. We teach the importance of working hard, having a positive mindset and having the confidence to ‘have a go’ and not be frightened to make mistakes. We want our pupils to understand and appreciate their locality and its relationships to the wider world and equally we want to expand their horizons to be able to recognise, fully appreciate and be excited by the opportunities afforded to them in the world beyond their lived experiences. 

At Salterforth Primary School, the intention of our curriculum is to provide our children with: 

• • Learning that is fun, exciting and interesting 
• • Learning that is rich in vocabulary and promotes oracy skills 
• • Opportunities that expose them to our wide, diverse world 
• • Opportunities to develop resilience, self-reflection and reciprocity 
• • Appropriate challenge and support so that children have no limit to their aspirations 
• • Experiences to develop their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development 
• • An understanding of positive and healthy lifestyles, both physically and mentally 

With the exception of the Early Years Foundation Stage, our classes are structured in mixed year groups and as such our curriculum has been designed on a 2-year cycle.  

Implementation: 

Our curriculum intent is delivered through a whole school experience. Teachers use the carefully developed Long Term plans to build clear sequences of lessons and exciting learning opportunities for all non-core subjects. Importantly, these are deliberately constructed to support and enable our children to make clear links in their learning and utilise these to build effectively on previous knowledge. We know that we all learn by practising skills until they become embedded habits in our long-term memories. We also know that some under-served children and some children with special educational needs take longer to embed new skills and knowledge within their long-term memories and need to spend longer practising and be supported in applying their new skills and knowledge. 

Children are taught English (including Phonics / guided reading) and Mathematics daily alongside weekly non-core subject lessons. The delivery of our curriculum is further enhanced through our use of specialist PE and Forest school teachers who work alongside teachers to enhance the delivery of the curriculum, as well as supporting the curriculum leads in this area. 

Our curriculum extends beyond the academic, with an equal focus on personal development and citizenship. We provide plentiful opportunities to do this, such as the School council; Pupil Parliament; Year 6 Senior pupil team; Gardeners and Seeds programme, sports leaders; Office angels, librarians, as well as other volunteering opportunities. We take great pride in the pastoral support offered in our school including our Emotions Works project and lego-based therapy. We also have wider ranging extra-curricular enrichment opportunities, such as Bikeability, forest school, residential trips, and utilising the local library which support the whole child. 

At Salterforth Primary, we welcome the Government’s emphasis on schools developing Cultural capital amongst its pupils. We see cultural capital as the accumulation of the essential knowledge and attitudes, which are often outside of their lived experiences, to allow a person to be an educated citizen. Cultural capital is embedded into our curriculum in order to help to close the gap between children form differing socio-economic backgrounds. 

Impact:

As a small school, we work together to design, structure and sequence the curriculum. In order to assess the effectiveness of the curriculum, core subject leaders oversee, champion and monitor the development of their subject areas. This work is undertaken through a range of activities, such as conversations with teachers; evaluating pupils’ work and outcomes, and talking to pupils about their learning. Foundation subjects are focused on within a rolling cycle with our staff team working together to implement developments within the subject area. 

The end result of a well-thought out and challenging curriculum, is that: 

• Pupils know and understand more about themselves and the wider world, and importantly, are ready for the next stage in their educational journey as independent, knowledgeable learners. 

• Pupils understand what it means to be a good citizen and as such, show appreciation of others and understand how they contribute to the wider community. 

At Salterforth, our aim is for all pupils to be recognised for the contribution they have made to our school and the wider community, and also to leave believing in themselves, having achieved their potential and ready for further success: Together we grow. 

Our subjects are organised into Subject Teams.

Our Phonics & Reading overview can be found here. 

Amethyst Class

Cycle A: Curriculum Overview

Cycle B: Curriculum Overview