Nurturing children’s learning and developing a curiosity for the exploration of knowledge
Our Curriculum
At Beckfoot Nessfield, we want our children to thrive in the world, with a curiosity for learning, compassion for others, self awareness and the belief that they can make a difference to their community. Our school curriculum is designed to give every child the knowledge and cultural capital they need to achieve this ambition.
Curriculum Enrichment
Early Years
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Find out more about subjects
Literacy sits at the core of our curriculum because it changes lives. High literacy levels ensure high attainment across all the curriculum subjects and have direct impact on wellbeing and quality of life.
We follow a Talk for Writing (T4W) approach for teaching fiction and non-fiction writing. The approach is based on the principles of how children learn and move from imitation to innovation to independent application. Children learn to plan, revise, and evaluate their writing effectively. Through developing their composition skills, we ensure they can form, articulate, and communicate ideas, organise them coherently for the reader, show an awareness of audience, purpose and context, and use increasingly varied and more complex vocabulary and grammar.
We use Little Wandle Letters and Sounds scheme to teach phonics. This programme is a government approved scheme and has enabled us to get consistently above National outcomes at the end of Y1. From the moment children start in Reception, children have daily phonics lessons to build on the sessions they have had in our Nursery. Little Wandle is taught in whole class groups with additional keep up sessions for children who are at risk of falling behind. Children are assessed approximately every six weeks.
Alongside daily phonics lessons children have group reading sessions three times a week using decodable books. These sessions focus on prosody, decoding, fluency, and comprehension. Children then take home their reading practise book to share with their families.
Children who do not pass the Y1 phonics screening, continue with rapid catch up intervention in Y2 in order to secure their decoding skills. Any child beyond Y2 who needs continued support is moved onto Little Wandle SEND programme.
Maths is a powerful tool that helps us understand the world and is essential to everyday life. We believe that all our children have the potential to succeed in maths and ensure they leave us with the mathematical knowledge and skills they need throughout all aspects of their lives .
We ensure children develop firm mathematical foundations in EYFS in a way that is engaging and appropriate for their age through both adult and child led learning opportunities.
We believe that a high-quality science curriculum is fundamental in providing a foundation for our pupils to understand the world around them. Pupils will build a body of key foundational science knowledge as they work their way through the curriculum asking questions and developing curiosity around the subject.
Pupils will gain knowledge in the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics, as they encounter people who have made significant contributions to the field of science over time, understanding that science is quest for knowledge and theory, and will continue to be so in the future.
Our art lessons encourage children to design, produce and evaluate art in a range of media as they are introduced to range of artists, techniques and materials. Using the ‘Access Art’ curriculum the children’s learning is split into 7 areas – Drawing, Sketchbooks, Printmaking, Painting, Collage, Making, Purpose/Visual Literacy/Articulation. We teach a progressive art curriculum in a two year cycle, through the yearly exploration of 6 pathways. Through these pathways, we introduce pupils to a range of diverse artists and pieces to inspire them; we teach techniques and provide opportunities for pupils to show individuality and express themselves, whilst also developing their skills and improving their mastery. Our teaching of art is further embedded within other areas of the curriculum.
We are delighted to be working with DT specialists ‘Hepp DT’ to deliver our design and technology curriculum. Their entire ethos centres around creating learning experiences that are engaging, memorable but more importantly, raising the profile of Design and Technology within the primary curriculum. Hepp DT ensure that primary Design and Technology in primary schools develops children’s skills and knowledge in design, structures, mechanisms, electrical control and a range of materials.
The digital world is integral to our daily lives and is vital for our children’s future. Our knowledge rich computing curriculum teaches children the skills they need to thrive in the digital world. We use the National Centre for Computing Education curriculum that is built around an innovative progression framework created by subject experts. Each year group from Y1 to Y6 builds on previously learnt knowledge and skills. The units for KS1 and KS2 are based on a spiral curriculum meaning each of the themes is revisited regularly enabling them to consolidate and build on prior knowledge. There are four themes: computing systems and networks; programming; data and information and creating media.
Each unit also includes online safety and/or digital citizenship. These essential areas are also covered across the curriculum, assemblies and special events such as Online Safety Week.
Our geography curriculum for KS1 and KS2 is adapted to the Primary Knowledge curriculum and helps children build powerful knowledge and understanding of the world. Children learn about key geographical concepts including place, space, the environment and how the world around them is interconnected. In KS1, children learn to name the countries of the United Kingdom and the seven oceans, as well as learning key geography concepts such as identifying human and physical features and basic map skills. In KS2, children deepen their knowledge of geographical concepts and study subjects such as rivers, population, sustainability and fieldwork skills. Each unit of work comes with a knowledge organiser, which contains the key vocabulary and the important facts that need to be learned to understand the unit. Every pupil adds this to their knowledge organiser to broaden their knowledge. Geography lessons include retrieval practice, with carefully selected questions that help children to remember previously taught knowledge that they can help build on with new learning.
Our history curriculum allows pupils to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of local, British and world history. The knowledge in the curriculum has been carefully chosen to represent the diversity of our society, through the mix of images, texts and people studied, and also to reflect the ancestral history of pupils in our school in a progressive and age appropriate way. Our curriculum is balanced to enable pupils to look in some depth at local, national and world history, encouraging pupils to explore the connection between significant events and people and how they have influenced the modern world. We address bias or stereotypes and support pupils in their own critical thinking.
We teach Spanish as a modern foreign language across KS2. We believe that learning a language provides an opportunity for our children to communicate more effectively with others, learning a language also helps them to understand what it is to be a global citizen. By teaching Spanish we are also preparing children for KS3. We teach Spanish using the Language Angels site which ensures progression of skills through KS2 and allows pupils to hear a Spanish accent to support pronunciation.
All classes have weekly music lessons following the Charanga scheme of work. We are currently in the process of becoming a Sing Up School. In addition, we have weekly singing assemblies and specialist music teachers from Learn to Rock supplement our music curriculum with drumming, keyboard and guitar lessons. We offer 1:1 and group lessons in drumming, guitar, keyboard and singing.
Year 6 are out Sing Up ambassadors and take part in regular performances throughout the year in the wider community.
We value physical activity and teach children how being active has a positive impact on their own wellbeing and that of others. Through the Get Set for PE scheme, children develop their confidence and skills across a broad range of sports. Children take part in athletics, badminton, netball, and volleyball as well as units on fitness, team building and fundamentals (running, jumping and throwing). All children in Years 3 and 4 have swimming lessons provided with an on-site portable hired pool, allowing our children to meet their National Curriculum expectation without losing travel time.
Our physical education teaching is also supported by our enrichment programme underpinned by our value of ambition. All children participate in an enrichment PE lesson each week alongside their Get Set for PE lesson. They are taught a range of sports by specialist teachers and coaches. These lessons include boxing, archery, karate and cheerleading.
Our Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE) programme helps our children keep themselves safe, mentally and physically healthy and prepared for life, the next step in their education and future work. Our programme covers the three statutory areas of Health and Wellbeing; Relationships; and Living in the Wider World, carefully exploring the value and importance of each as well as covering the DfE’s Statutory Guidance for Relationship, Sex, and Health Education.
We recognise that our PHSE curriculum is just one part of what we do as a school to help all our children develop the knowledge , skills, attitudes and understanding they need to fulfil their potential. Our school sentence is evident in our PHSE offer as we support children in striving to be even better tomorrow that they are today. Our school values of kindness, hard work and ambition, our pastoral support, behaviour protocol and strong family relationships work hand in hand with PHSE to ensure we go above and beyond in providing a setting where the responsible choice becomes the easy choice and our children leave us able to put what they have learnt into practice in their own lives.
Our PHSE curriculum comprises the myHappymind programme which covers 100% of the mandatory Relationship and Health Education guidelines as well as much of the PHSE and Early Years guidance. We supplement my HappyMind with The Story Project, Medway RSE lessons and our safety curriculum to ensure our children have:
- Accurate, balanced, and relevant knowledge to thrive
- Opportunities to turn that knowledge into personal understanding
- Opportunities to explore, clarify and, if necessary, challenge their own and other’s values, attitudes, beliefs, rights and responsibilities
- The skills, language and strategies they need in order to live healthy, safe, fulfilling, responsible and balanced lives.
- Opportunities to develop positive, personal attributes such as resilience, self-confidence, self-esteem, and empathy.
Teaching religious education helps our children to respect others and build a broader understanding of different views and beliefs. RE also improves their knowledge of global affairs and supports their sense of wellbeing. Alongside these key areas, children also begin to develop ethical standards and prevents extremism and religious discrimination.
Our RE curriculum helps to develop spiritual understanding and gives valuable insights into the divers beliefs and opinions held by people today. We follow the Bradford approved scheme Believing and Belonging. As well as RE lessons, we recognise festivals from across different faiths during our collective worship assemblies. RE plays an integral part of our No Outsiders ethos that sits within out school value of kindness.