At Simmondley Primary School we are committed to ensuring our children have a broad and balanced curriculum. Our work with Ignite TSA has led us to developing a 'Three Layered Curriculum' including opportunities for our children to learn about British Values, Diversity, Social Justice and Conservation. The Three Layered Curriculum includes;
Layer 1- The National Curriculum which defines the programmes of study for key subjects in maintained state primary and secondary schools in England. Fundamentally, it sets out what your child is supposed to learn and when; The curriculum, covers English and Maths but also encompasses other subjects too including Science, History, Geography, Music, Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE), Physical Education ( PE), Modern Foreign Language (MFL) and Religious Education (RE.)
Layer 2 – We have also thought about our distinctiveness here at Simmondley in line with our core framework and values and considered what else we want our children to learn. For example; playing a musical instrument, performing in a play, accessing The Arts, developing children as leaders.
Layer 3- Which we see as 'The Icing on the Cake' where we are looking to develop partnerships with other organisations that our children can become involved in. For example; Mountain Rescue, Chester Zoo.
Our work with Ignite TSA is leading us to developing a curriculum that that creates ‘botheredness, investment, passion and curiosity in our children about their learning.
At Simmondley Primary School we follow the Derbyshire Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education.
Phonics and the Teaching of Reading
Reading for pleasure is at the heart of our curriculum at Simmondley School. Ensuring that all children are engaged with reading, from the very beginning, is one of the most important ways to make a difference to their life chances.
Reading begins in the Foundation Stage where children begin blending and segmenting phonemes and learning common exception words. All children take home a phonetically decodable reading book, so that they can practise and consolidate what they have learnt in school.
Children are taught using systematic synthetic phonics. We are currently in the process of researching and purchasing a new multisensory scheme, in order to give all of our children the best possible start on their reading journey.
We follow a skills based reading curriculum which we have personalised and developed for our school. Children learn the skills to help them to become an ‘active reader’ and these are built upon throughout their time at Simmondley School. The skills are referred to in reading lessons and across the curriculum.
The eight reading skills are:
- I can make the most of what I already know about a topic
- I can predict what might happen next
- I can visualise pictures in my head
- I can spot an understanding breakdown and use a repair kit
- I can ask questions
- I can use clues in the text – be a reading detective
- I can summarise – say what the main idea is
- I can talk about what I am reading
Once children have moved on from phonetically decodable books, they can choose books from our school reading scheme. Books are colour banded across school to match children’s abilities in terms of reading stamina, comprehension and vocabulary. These books are carefully chosen and updated regularly in order to give our children a wide and varied ‘reading diet’.
Please see the links below to see what our children are learning. More details about the subjects being taught can be found in our Class Newsletters.