Overview

At East Stour Primary School we believe that all children deserve

an ambitious, rich and relevant curriculum with wellbeing at the very heart. 

We aim to inspire our children to become lifelong learners, providing every child with the knowledge, skills and personal values to empower them to achieve their full potential.

Values

Our curriculum at East Stour is underpinned by nine core values. We aspire for all our children be: 

Empowered

Ambitious

Supportive

Tolerant 

Successful

Trustworthy

Optimistic

Understanding 

Resilient 

Wellbeing is at the forefront of all we do and we pride ourselves on our provision for this, with every child being seen as unique, and a strong belief that all children can succeed in life with a secure set of personal values. 

Each term we have a whole-school focus on one or two of the above values. We embed these within the school day through consistent vocabulary, age-appropriate key phrases, and events linked to the current term’s value. These events include assemblies, lessons, performances and celebrations.

Parallel to the termly value we encourage our children to develop a growth mind-set throughout their school life. Enabling this attitude within children, allows them to grow their sense of resilience, perseverance and ultimately independence. We use Thrive as a specific way to develop social and emotional well-being, supporting children as they grow to become more capable, adaptable, and confident. Additionally, each class timetables ‘Cultural Capital’ lessons to develop essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens, and create an appreciation of creativity and achievement. These include British values, current events, diversity, music and the arts.

Our children change from year to year and our curriculum will adapt to those changing needs. This is done by putting the interests and talents of our pupils at the centre of our planning, challenging and inspiring our learners with contexts that they find exciting and engaging. The children are actively involved in the design of their curriculum, allowing them to contribute their own ideas, knowledge and talents.

We use Music throughout our curriculum as a tool to support creativity, collaboration and well-being. Children have the opportunity to learn a variety of instruments and to participate in concerts and choirs. We reinforce our termly value with a whole-school song linked to that value, with each class learning an additional song or musical piece linked to their own class topic.

Our curriculum provides a broad and balanced coverage of subjects in a largely cross-curricular and creative manner. Increased enjoyment leads to increased engagement and so our curriculum is designed to ‘hook’ our children into enjoying their learning! By years 5 and 6 subject areas are made more explicit to aid in their transition to discrete subjects in secondary school.

Knowledge and skills are mapped out clearly across the years for each subject so learning is built on in a cohesive and sequenced manner, towards a clear end point. Connections are made between past, present and future learning, with lessons being sequenced to ascertain and build on prior knowledge. Retention of new knowledge into long term memory is embedded through these connections and the use of activities that promote higher-level thinking skills, such as creating, evaluating and analysing. Each termly topic also has a planned intended outcome, allowing children to demonstrate the skills and knowledge that they will gain. This approach ensures that learning is meaningful and connected, as well as opening it up to be shared with a wider audience either at school or at home. The children’s knowledge is broadened and deepened within their year group expectations and the teaching and learning is ambitious, in depth and promotes deep understanding within that year group's curriculum.

Teachers have the flexibility to plan unusual and exciting days or activities linked to their topic, and we have a wealth of extra-curricular and enrichment opportunities to support this. This includes a range of clubs, trips and other first-hand learning experiences.  Our school encourages an active lifestyle and every class participates in a “Daily Mile”. Many of our children have the opportunity to compete in a range of sporting activities with other schools.

Reading is a priority in our school and we use high-quality, age-appropriate texts as a base for our topic planning. This engages our pupils with text, exposing them to a range of high-level vocabulary and encouraging the application of this within topics. Vocabulary is explicitly planned and progressive across all years. We use RWI phonics to create a solid foundation for reading and encourage our pupils to read widely and often, using shared and guided reading sessions in addition to class books. 

We use the principles of Maths Mastery in our approach to mathematics, allowing our learners to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, reason mathematically and solve problems. 

We aim to inspire our children to become lifelong learners, providing every child with the knowledge, skills and personal values to empower them to achieve their full potential.