Should you require further information about our curriculum at Conway, please direct your questions, queries via email to admin@conway.greenwich.sch.uk

Curriculum Intent Statement 

Curriculum Intent

 Our curriculum puts the child at the centre of our caring, sharing, achieving school, where positive relationships, based on mutual trust and respect are at the heart of everything we do. Our ambitious curriculum has been designed to take account of the legal requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum and the Primary National Curriculum. It exposes our children to enriching experiences, immersing them in progressive knowledge and skills; equipping them with personal characteristics required to succeed in life. The creative and performing arts are pivotal to our curriculum delivery and ensure that our children are immersed in vibrant experiences, allowing each of them to express themselves as an individual. The key principles behind the design of our curriculum are for our children to:

1. be confident, independent and resilient; displaying a thirst for learning
2. be kind; showing empathy and compassion whilst valuing diversity
3. achieve academically across the entire curriculum, meeting at least the national expectation by the end of their primary education
4. be culturally knowledgeable about our country and our world
5. have aspirations for the future and know that these can be reached through hard work and determination
6. be well prepared for the challenges of the secondary school curriculum.
7. To develop emotional intelligence and awareness of self

Ultimately, we want all of our children, to be the best they can be, making a positive contribution to the world they live in.

Curriculum Implementation

Children are expected to work hard and demonstrate positive learning behaviours to both maximise their own individual learning potential as well as contributing to the school and wider community. We have high expectations of attendance, academic achievement and pupil behaviour. We are committed to working in partnership with parents as we believe that when home and school work closely together, we get the best outcomes for our pupils.

PSHE and Mind Momentum (emotional intelligence programme) are at the heart of the curriculum we deliver to closely meet the needs of our pupils. Our PSHE framework and bespoke Mind Momentum programme focus on well-being, positive self-awareness, relationships and the wider world. Our pupils have access to a wide range of enriching opportunities which promote personal safety and pupil voice with all children being actively involved in whole school decision making through the School Council and many positions of responsibility. Our curriculum recognises the importance of pupils’ physical and mental well-being in shaping their long term life-style choices.

We believe that our fundamental task is to teach our children to speak clearly and articulately and to read and write effectively. Reading across all curriculum areas is a priority to extend and deepen pupils understanding and use of vocabulary. We want pupils to develop a love of reading during their time at Conway and be exposed to a range of high quality literature. The use of the school libraries and class shared texts are pivotal to this as well as our engaging reading displays and reading corners.

In order to raise aspirations and equip children with a real belief that they can achieve anything if they are prepared to work hard, it is imperative that we prioritise experiential learning within our curriculum.  We deliver engaging topic days which create memorable experiences, encouraging children to immerse themselves into learning across the curriculum.   We further support this with educational and residential visits which are carefully chosen to deepen understanding.

Reviewed September 2022

 

A Day in the life of Zara (Year Two)

My day at school begins at 8 a.m. because I go to breakfast club. You can go or not. You can eat or play. The food is always yummy! Then, when the time is up, you get your belongings and line up. I enjoy breakfast club.

Our first lesson is maths. I’ve been learning about the column method. It’s good to learn new things. Next, it’s English, we are writing a non-chronological report about Hermit crabs. After that, you have fruit and milk time. A few minutes later, we have guided reading. It’s really exciting!

At lunchtime, we go back to our classes and the dinner lady picks us up. We go down the stairs and line up to have lunch. After you have had your lunch, you can do ‘Just Dance’ or other games like gymnastics. When the whistle blows you line up to go inside. I adore playtime.

After that, in the afternoon, we do robust maths. I like this lesson because I love doing mental maths games and activities. Then, we do phonics. I have been reading ‘Gregory Cool’ and answering questions about the story.  Later on, when we return from afternoon playtime, we do science or PE. In science, we are learning about plants. PE is loads of activities and fun. My school day ends at 3 p.m. I really like my school days, I hope you will too.

Our Learning

At Conway, we believe children learn best when they are given opportunities to explore, investigate and learn through doing. This is why we are proud of our broad and balanced curriculum that allows our pupils to explore their strengths and constantly develop aspects they find more challenging. We believe exciting and interesting projects engage children, so they can learn in a fun, hands-on way.

The Curriculum

At Conway, the core subjects (Reading, Writing and Maths) are all taught in ability sets, allowing children to receive teaching which can be tailored to their individual needs.

Reading

At Conway, we aim to nurture a life-long love of reading from EYFS all the way up to Year 6. We have well-stocked book corners in each classroom with a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books to engage and inspire children no matter what their interests are. For those children who may be reluctant readers, Kindles can be borrowed to take home to encourage children to read high-quality texts on a daily basis.  At Conway, we currently use the Oxford Learning Tree and Oxford Reading Owl reading programme across all year groups.

EYFS and KS1

Children in EYFS and KS1 take part in daily Phonics lessons, supported by the Read Write Inc programme. Phonics is taught in small ability sets, which allows teachers to target children effectively and, where needed, put appropriate interventions in place quickly.

At Conway, we are using the RWI Synthetic Phonics Scheme to teach phonics in EYFS and KS1.

This programme focuses on teaching children to read, understanding what they have read and applying this to their writing.

Teachers and LSAs work with small groups where teaching is specifically targeted to meet the needs of the children. A new sound is taught to the children everyday and the sound is put into context with a book that all the children will read in the session. Children will also bring home a copy of the book they are reading in school. The children’s comprehension skills are developed throughout with questions linked to the books.

What you can do at home to help your child learn to read –

• Complete the sound worksheet with your child. Practice reading and writing the sound.

• Listen to your child read their weekly RWI book.

• Talk about the stories – question your child on what has happened, who are the characters?

• Explain and discuss the meaning of new words.

You can find out more information at www.Ruthmiskinliteracy.com

 

KS2

As children move into KS2, the focus shifts to comprehension skills, such as inference and deduction. Children are also encouraged to develop positive responses to texts through discussion. In order to gain an in-depth understanding of a range of texts, links with the children’s work done in writing through “The Power of Reading” are made wherever possible so that children are fully immersed in the book they are studying.

Writing

We believe that communication is at the heart of all that we do and as such we have extremely high expectations of our pupils in all areas of English, including reading, writing, speaking and listening.

EYFS, KS1 and KS2 all follow “The Power of Reading” scheme, where skills to write a range of fiction and non-fiction text types are based around high-quality texts from authors such as Roald Dahl, Ted Hughes, SF Said and Michelle Magorian.

In line with the 2014 National Curriculum, children are taught to articulate ideas and structure them clearly in speech and writing. Initially, teachers will support pupils’ developing ideas by modelling the planning and writing process so that children feel confident when applying their writing skills independently.

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) is taught within writing lessons as well as an additional SPaG sessions across the school.  Where appropriate, teachers ensure writing objectives are used to develop writing across the curriculum in foundation subjects.

Maths

At Conway we recognise that Mathematics is an integral part of everyday life and consequently strive to ensure children have the skills to help them calculate, problem-solve and reason effectively in order to make sense of the world around them.  We follow the 2014 National Curriculum from EYFS to Year 6 and supplement this with a 30-minute “Robust Maths” session in the afternoon, where essential skills such as counting, place value and mental arithmetic strategies are taught.

Topic Days

Each half term, the children at Conway come off timetable for two fun-filled topic days. On these cross-curricular days we aim to broaden the children’s knowledge and understanding of the world around them, as well as providing purposeful opportunities for them to apply the key skills they have learnt throughout the half term.

The whole school is set a theme, which is divided up into year groups and then classes. Each day is carefully planned for by the class teacher, taking into account the needs and interests of the children, to include a range of activities focusing on a range of subjects.

Topics we have learnt about this year have included;

• Black History month

• Natural disasters

• Famous people

• What is life like in…? A study of a country.

• Keeping Healthy

If you would like to have a look at the national curriculum website please click here. 

Religious Education

RE teaching is based on units from the Greenwich scheme of work, Windows on Faith, and fits into the overall learning contexts wherever possible.

·         RE enables children to investigate and reflect on some of the most fundamental questions asked by people … We develop the children’s knowledge and understanding of the major faiths, and address fundamental questions concerning, for example, the meaning of life and the existence of divine spirit.In KS1 and 2 “there is a systematic study of Christianity and the other 5 principal religions in the UK (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism)”.