Curriculum

Curriculum Vision

Challock is a unique school. As soon as you cross the threshold you get the most amazing feeling of warmth and happiness. There is a spark in the air which exemplifies energy, excited engagement and a love of learning; where everyone, whether child or adult, is a committed partner in learning and development. Everyone is valued and everyone’s happiness and well-being is a central feature of our environment. We are a caring school that nurtures all within it – we are a family.

We believe in providing a curriculum for excellence, built around the needs of the pupils within our school. We have exciting and forward thinking schemes of work in all areas and we are consistently seeking new ways of enabling our children to succeed in order to support them in becoming the very best they can be. As a team, and in consultation with our children, we are constantly reflecting on how we can weave our pupils’ interests and passions into their daily learning. Our aim is to not only ensure our children exceed academically, but to develop truly amazing individuals who will thrive and make positive contributions to our future society.

Every child in our school is special and staff pride themselves in helping them to realise and achieve their potential and beyond. The way we work and the things we believe in will ensure our children will leave us as:

• Confident individuals
• Active and aspirational learners
• Responsible citizens
• Effective team members

We CARE – children will develop the following key skills:

Respect; Honesty; Resilience; Responsibility; Co-operation; Independence.

Challock Primary School is a wonderful place to begin a life-long journey of learning and education and everyone in our school truly appreciates that; as our school council perfectly put it:

‘We are proud of our school and we are proud of each other.’

Curriculum Intent

Our curriculum aims to:

• Ensure that all pupils have access to a broad, balanced curriculum for excellence based on the National curriculum.
• Ensure quality curriculum content of each subject is sequential and builds on prior learning.
• Be relevant to each child in the school, regardless of their age, gender, individual circumstances or academic ability.
• Has some fluidity, to ensure that children with additional needs may access the curriculum in different and often very practical ways, whilst also ensuring that those children who attain ‘greater depth’ standards are challenged, inspired and have a thirst for knowledge.

Reading has a strong focus at Challock and is at the heart of all we do. Teachers lead by example, promoting a real love for reading.

Creating a sense of awe and wonder that excites and inspires children is a key factor in attaining our high academic standards. We try to ensure that all members of our school community share our aspirational expectations for our school and each individual pupil.

Curriculum Implementation

Each subject area has a designated subject leader and a support partner to help to oversee the subject across the school. Our curriculum is under constant review in response to the needs of our children, developments in education and our local context. We are always looking for ways to improve and develop the learning opportunities we can offer our children. We carefully consider, through regular planning meetings, how our curriculum will meet the needs of all pupils. We are constantly reflecting on how we can provide the most vibrant, exciting curriculum in order to ensure our pupils have a wealth of opportunities to thrive both academically and personally. For example our Infant Passport and Junior Award Scheme (JASS), enables our pupils to promote, share and develop confidence, resilience and self-esteem in an engaging, motivational and rewarding way which ensures that every child achieves and success celebrated. Both the Passport and JASS are a great way to motivate children to volunteer, support the community, look after their health and fitness, seek out adventure and build skills that will support them for the rest of their life.

 
We are part of the CARE Foundation Trust group of 10 schools, a strong collaboration of schools who support each other and share best practice. We are a learning community who share resources, training and learning experiences for both staff and children. Some of the joint events enjoyed by our pupils have been:

• Annual Carol Concert in aid of charity
• Young Voices Choir at the O2
• Spelling Bee
• Maths Competition
• Joint science workshops
• Eco conference with the Mayor of Ashford
• Challenger Games

 
At Challock, you will see pupils embracing the curriculum in a variety of ways in accordance to their learning style – our key goal is to ensure that learning is memorable and will be retained for life. Our curriculum is not just exciting, but it is also ambitious, providing appropriate challenge as children move throughout the school.

Our excellent communication with parents is vital to ensure deep learning and our use of Tapestry and Seesaw is integral to support learning both at school and at home.

Curriculum Impact

The impact of our curriculum can be seen in the standards we attain throughout the school, particularly by the end of primary school. In addition to our success in reading, writing and maths, our provision of enrichment opportunities enables children to achieve high standards across all areas of the curriculum.
 
Our pupils also demonstrate the impact of our curriculum through their behaviour for learning; children are confident and successful learners. The relationships across the whole school community are excellent and older pupils take the role as ambassadors of the school and supporting our younger children very seriously. The children love working together and sharing their learning with each other and visitors.
 
Feedback from anyone who visits our school is overwhelmingly positive. It is a truly special place. Students leave us ready for their next educational adventure – the secondary schools love getting children from Challock! We love hearing all the success stories and frequently have children return to us to help out when they have Inset days or work experience placements. Year 7 pupils thoroughly enjoy coming back to talk to our Year 6’s about transition in the summer term.

The National Curriculum

The National Curriculum (NC) provides both the content and the framework for most of what we teach at Challock School. In the Early Years, children experience the seven areas of learning required as part of the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. Older children in Key Stage One and Key Stage Two are taught the ‘core’ subjects of English, Mathematics and Science and the ‘foundation’ subjects of History, Geography, Music, Art, Physical Education (PE), Design and Technology (DT), French, Computing and Religious Education (RE). 

Where possible the curriculum is delivered through cross-curricular themes to connect work from different subjects together, allowing children to make effective links in their learning.

The National Curriculum also requires that children are ‘secondary ready’ by the time they leave primary school. At Challock we believe that this is our core task. We believe it is essential that the process by which this is achieved is as creative, engaging and exciting as possible, instilling an enthusiasm and lifelong love of learning.

Our Curriculum Topics