Our Curriculum
At St Kenelm's CE Primary School we offer a curriculum which is broad and balanced and which builds on the knowledge, understanding, and skills of all children as they progress through each Key Stage, stimulating them to learn. The curriculum incorporates the statutory requirements of the new National Curriculum 2014 and other experiences and opportunities which best meet the learning and development needs of the pupils in our school. We use 'The Learning Challenge Curriculum' as a basis for planning to ensure coverage and progression of skills throughout the school, then individual year groups plan the curriculum for their pupils accordingly. The aim of our curriculum is for pupils to have the requisite skills to achieve success in many different areas and become independent and motivated learners in readiness for their next stage of education. Alongside our main curriculum policy, each subject leader has a clear intent and vision for their subject.
We provide suitable learning challenges that respond to diverse needs. This encompasses a variety of exciting experiences both in and outside of the classroom. We follow a theme-based approach to learning, in the belief that children learn best when logical connections are made between different aspects of their work. Creativity is encouraged through our curriculum. Teaching and Learning is matched to pupils preferred learning styles, is differentiated to match ability and makes the most of our developing provision in ICT to support this. To help children progress in their learning and understand what they need to do to improve, they have individual targets which are shared with parents and carers. Parents are also kept informed about their child's learning via newsletter or topic web sent out at the start of each topic by individual teachers.
Curriculum Policy Teaching and Learning Policy
To view the current curriculum topics please click on the year groups under the Curriculum tab.
Enriching our curriculum with visits, visitors and experiences
At St. Kenelm's we know that learning sticks when it is memorable and connected with real-life experience. It is our school policy that during a school year, children will have the opportunity to go out on educational trips to augment their learning. All of our staff are visit leader trained and our Educational Visit Leader is Mrs Thomas.
Recent trips have included Think tank, Bishop's Wood Centre, Botanical Gardens in Birmingham, The Black Country Museum and even Tesco!
Using our local environment
We value the opportunities that specialist venues offer us but we also make sure that we use our locality to add to our learning. Rooted in our values are our appreciation of the beauty and awe and wonder of creation and we use our natural areas as much as possible.
Learning in the Outdoors
We are so lucky to have recently enhanced our outdoor areas with thanks to a National Lottery grant and we make sure that we use the outdoors as much as we can! Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 have specific and focused forest school sessions.
All teachers enjoy using the outdoor areas wherever possible and we incorporate this in our planning: Using our story circle for sharing a book, using our staging for French role play or drama in literacy lessons, using our forest area for story settings, using our pond and vegetable garden for focused science session and using our natural environment for art inspiration are just some examples of what happens in a typical week!
Romsley is full of natural beauty and we make sure that we pay visits to local woodland areas and places of natural interest as well as walks around our village when it links with our learning.
Every term, we are able to offer all of our children the chance to visit the beautiful St. Kenelm's church for special services with Reverend Dominic and his team.
Residential Trips
At St. Kenelm's we have two residential trips during your child's time at the school. In Year 4, children spend three days and two nights at a local outdoor adventure centre called Blackwell Court. This is a brilliant experience that helps promote independence along with increasing physical and team-building skills.
In Year 6, children spend the week away at an Art's residential centre in Stafford called Ingestre. This is a fantastic opportunity to make new friends with children in our pyramid who also visit as part of the same trip. During the week, children become experts in new arts activities of their choice including: animation, drama, dance, music and art. They get to specialise in two art forms and present their art to the whole group. It is an amazing and valuable experience that has proven very popular over the years we have been going.
Visitors
We always welcome visitors to help enrich our curriculum. We look to give children real-life links wherever we can and we are lucky to have had many experts from different organisations to help us with this. Here are just a few examples of some of our recent community visitors:
- The whole school had the chance to spend science sessions with Lucy from the RSPB (supported by Aldi)
- Year 2 had experts from the RNLI to link with their topic, and 'Samuel Pepys' to help them learn about the fire of London
- Year 4 have had a session with ex- workers from our local Blue bird Toffee factory. Sadly, the factory has been closed for some years
- The wildlife trust delivered an assembly about the importance of bees
- The NSPCC delivered assemblies and workshops to help us to keep safe
- Librarians from our local libraries have included us in their 'best books ever' and ' summer reading challenge' initiatives and have delivered assemblies and sessions in school.
If you require more information about our curriculum please feel free to talk to Mrs. Thomas, our curriculum leader.