At Gade Valley, the essence of our curriculum is to prepare our pupils for the future.  We deliver a carefully sequenced broad and balanced curriculum, which not only provides essential knowledge and skills, but also promotes important spiritual, moral, social and cultural education. Ultimately, we aim to prepare all pupils to be well-balanced citizens.

We aim to do this by: supporting our pupils to build strong foundations, making learning purposeful, developing pupils’ life skills such as resilience or handwriting, focusing on contextual issues such as technology or the community, developing personal skills such as empathy or self-confidence and most importantly inspiring an importance and love of learning.

Our curriculum is underpinned by a core focus on developing pupil’s literacy and maths skills as well as enabling the pupils to develop themselves as lifelong learners and valued members of the school and wider community.

Our curriculum is committed to meeting the requirements of the primary National Curriculum.  It is intended to challenge all pupils so that they can progress well from their starting point and attain the highest standards.  It is designed to make learning enjoyable and contextual so pupils gain meaningful skills and knowledge that will equip them in each stage of their learning journey and in the wider context outside of school.

Interwoven in all aspects of the curriculum is the focus on learning behaviours which is developed through growth mind-set and the CHAMP attributes - these equip the pupils to thrive as learners; being confident, helpful, attentive, motivated and perseverant helps them not only with their learning, but also their day to day lives.

Within the curriculum, many creative opportunities are available to enhance learning, ranging from ‘Track Time’ to the many initiatives used to promote a love of reading.

We believe that we will be more successful if this curriculum is enshrined in a clear and shared approach to teaching and learning and to the school ethos.

Our core aims as a school are:

• To create a happy, safe and positive school community where everyone is valued and all pupils have an equal opportunity to thrive.
• To develop pupils as successful lifelong learners.
• To develop each pupil’s character by providing a meaningful curriculum, experiences and opportunities.
• To ensure high quality teaching leads to high quality learning.

As a school we have the following curriculum principles:

• Core subjects (maths, writing and reading) will be taught every day.
• Each class will have a daily ‘Take 5’ and ‘Once Upon a time session’.
• Phonics will be taught daily in KS1 and EYFS.
• Spellings will be taught 3 times per week in KS2.
• Discrete handwriting lessons will be taught regularly each week (number dependant on class), as well as being taught throughout the curriculum.
• All subjects will follow the 2014 National Curriculum.
• The skills and knowledge progression grids will be used to plan units of work.
• Foundation subjects can be blocked to allow cross-curricular learning and in depth coverage.
• Teachers are encouraged to be creative and provide opportunities for cross-curricular and experiential learning.
• Teachers to be aware of weaknesses in progress and adapt provision accordingly.
• Learning behaviours and SMSC to be developed within the curriculum.
• All lessons to follow the Gade Valley Principles for teaching and learning.

Please see the individual subject pages for further details.