Our Approach

We believe the curriculum should be as exciting and as stimulating as possible but should also develop key knowledge that children need to know so that they can flourish in the future. 

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Our staff have worked to carefully identify the key knowledge and skills (which we call 'sticky knowledge'). Details of this can be found below, along with our approach to effective teaching.

EYFS

The children in Reception follow an Early Years Curriculum which staff have carefully designed and developed. This ensures our children attain strongly within the seven key areas of learning and development. 

You can find out more about Early Years via the link below.

Key Stage 1 & 2

Children in years 1 to 6 follow the discrete subjects within the National Curriculum: English, Mathematics, Science, Computing, Religious Education, Design and Technology, Geography, History, Art, Music and Physical Education. PSHE is also taught across school. Children in KS2 also learn French.

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Curriculum Design

Our curriculum is designed to be knowledge rich and aims to support the children to know more, remember more. Key knowledge and vocabulary is revisited so that it becomes embedded in the long term memory through a carefully planned out curriculum map and the use of knowledge organisers. This is based on the principle that if nothing has changed in the long-term memory then nothing has been learned. However, teaching and learning approaches also aim to develop skills and values alongside knowledge organisers, ensuring that both are explicitly developed. The curriculum is designed to enable progress by teaching new information that relates to what is already known enriching and or transforming what is already known.

Curriculum Organisation:

The curriculum at Darley Churchtown is organised into a comprehensive 2 year cycle, where the National Curriculum is taught to children in mixed ages classes. The whole school two year cycle can be viewed below. 

Want to know more?

We run a number of parent workshops throughout the school year which further explain our approach to the teaching of areas such as phonics, reading and maths.