Astmoor Primary SchoolCurriculum
Foundation Stage
In Foundation Stage, our curriculum is organised into 6 themes each year which broadly align with the curriculum themes for the rest of the school. The curriculum is planned using the Department for Education guidance, 'Development Matters'. Within the curriculum there are 7 areas of learning. The first 3 areas are PRIME areas of learning: Communication and Language, Physical Development and Personal, Social and Emotional Development.The remaining areas are; Literacy, Maths, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design. Through our careful planning, we offer a broad curriculum which aims to support children to achieve the Early Learning Goals.
Speech and Language
We recognise the importance of good speech and language skills for learning and prioritise these skills when children enter Foundation Stage. All children are assessed within the first 4 weeks of entering school using the Wellcomm Audit tool. This helps us to identify any children that may need an onward referral to specialised Speech and Language support. As we use the services of a private consultant for this, the timescales are usually short meaning that children usually have support plans in place for speech and language within the first half term. Within school, we also ring fence time to allow a teacher to provide this specialised support to children.
Year 1 - Year 6
Our school curriculum for children in Year 1 - Year 6 is organised into half-termly, whole-school themes. They are planned on a two year cycle. When planning our themes, we consult with the children in order to find out what they are interested in and what they want to learn about. We also take account of our school community and locality and find genuine links with Global Issues that we feel are important for our children to learn about. Some themes will be more heavily weighted towards a particular curriculum subject than others but full coverage of the national curriculum is balanced over a two year cycle.
Within the school year, we also plan Well-being Days which gives everyone (staff and children) the opportunity to focus on mental health, well-being and mindfulness. These days usually happrn on the last Wednesday of each half term.
2023 - 2024 Curriculum Themes
1. The Wonderful World of Water
2. Our United Kingdom
3. Special People, Special Achievements
4. Books, Stories and Authors
5. Our Beautiful World
6. Animal Antics
2024 - 2025 Curriculum Themes
1. Happy and Healthy
2. Let's Celebrate
3. When Things Go Wrong
4. Houses and Homes
5. Wings, Wheels and Waves
6. The Rainbow Nation