Our Recovery Curriculum September 2020

We have adapted our curriculum in order to support our children returning to school in September. We have looked at key skills which children need to be taught in order to build on what they know and to move their learning forward. We aim to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, whilst still focusing on the core areas of phonics, reading, writing and maths.

English Curriculum

Phonics:

We continue to follow the Letter and Sounds programme to support our teaching of phonics across school. Daily phonics lessons are planned for all children in EYFS and KS1. Y3 will continue with group phonics lessons for the lowest 20% of the cohort this year who didn't pass the Phonics Screening Check in Year 1. Children in KS2 receive targeted phonics support on a daily basis. Our phonics teaching is supplemented by daily catch up lessons - targeted individual support for the children who are still struggling to blend or who haven't grasped the concepts in the main lesson. The approach that we use in school is a result of our involvement with our local English Hub (Little Sutton) who have provided tailored-support to ensure we meet key performance indicators for early reading and language development. Below is an overview of our phonics teaching for this academic year which has been agreed by the English Hub.

Reading:

We want our children to foster a lifelong love of books and reading throughout their primary school life and way beyond. We immerse our children in the wonders of quality texts to instill a love of reading, passion for discovery and a confidence to explore their imagination. See our Reading Overview for more information on how we teach reading at Regents Park.

Writing:

Our writing curriculum focuses on basic skills in the first few weeks of September. This is so that teachers can gauge where the children are with their learning and look at next steps.

We have planned in a 'catch up' unit of work in the first half of the Autumn term. The theme of the units is ‘Keep Believing’ with a range of texts celebrating the achievements of inspirational people in response to Black Lives Matter. The focus of each unit is the recap of basic key skills from previous learning and the opportunity to apply these skills across a range of short writing tasks. Skills that pupils may not have yet mastered have been built into the units. Each unit provides an opportunity for an extended writing task as an outcome.

Other units throughout the year support our topic work. Books have been selected which link into key themes such as 'The Romans' and 'Plants'. Teachers are also expected to plan in opportunities for poetry so children are receiving breadth of the English curriculum.  

The aims of our maths teaching at Regents Park Primary School are set in line with the aims of the National Curriculum: fluency, reasoning and problem solving. We understand that children need to learn basic number facts and acquire fluency in procedures, alongside developing conceptual understanding if they are to be able to solve increasingly complex problems.

We use the Bright Pi teaching sequence to plan our maths lessons. This is supplemented by the DfE Maths Guidance alongside the White Rose Progression overviews in order to support children's mathematical learning and bridge any gaps.