Brave Explorers, Great Thinkers

The Ridgefield Curriculum

Intent

At Ridgefield Primary School, our motto, ‘Brave Explorers, Great Thinkers’ underpins all the work we do. It reflects the strong focus we place on building a learning community and our vision to ensure that every child is happy and experiences success. Resilience, independence, perseverance and co-operation are fostered as fundamental learning tools for life.

Our intent is to ensure that our children develop a love of learning and leave us with a good grounding in the fundamental skills which will help them to become life-long learners as well as gifting them with the ability to effectively communicate their own thoughts and ideas in a range of ways by ensuring that all pupils have access to a great, broad and balanced curriculum.

As such, our curriculum encompasses not only the formal requirements of the National Curriculum, but goes beyond the experiences of the classroom to ensure that our children are exposed to the richest and most varied opportunities that we can provide. Whilst our children study the full range of National Curriculum subjects (see below for details), we also believe passionately that high standards in the basics should never compromise the broader curriculum.

Furthermore, the Ridgefield Curriculum celebrates the diversity, and utilises the skills, knowledge and cultural wealth of our community while supporting the children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, ensuring that children develop the knowledge, skills and experience that will prepare them for life in modern Britain.

Throughout our approach we expect to fully comply with the Equality Act 2010 and this is further outlined in our Equality Policy.

Implementation
To achieve our intent the Ridgefield Curriculum develops, stretches and ignites the children’s imagination whilst providing the opportunity to learn in many different ways.

The essential elements of the Ridgefield Curriculum are:

• Talk – Develop language skills, speaking and listening, enriched vocabulary through variety of quality learning experiences
• Touch – Provide practical real life experiences
• Trips – Make trips an integral part of the curriculum to enrich experiences and vocabulary
• Teams – Develop collaboration
• Thinking – Develop enquiry based learning and deep thinking
• Trust – Build relationships and a safe, secure and happy learning environment
• Technology – Use a variety of resources to enhance learning
   
  Through the ‘7Ts’ we ensure that the children are at the centre of their own learning and acquire ‘learn to learn’ skills. We bring the National Curriculum alive by making links between the individual subjects and, where appropriate, applying them to topics. We ensure that they have opportunities to explore their world through drama and performance at every opportunity; or by learning to investigate problems and develop their scientific enquiry skills. We make use of the local area and local people to bring the learning alive. Outdoor learning and Forest school provision allow children to take measured risks and enable them to apply their learning skills across a broad range of experiences. 

 
ICT is used for children and by children as an integral aspect of the teaching and learning process from Nursery to Year 6.

Learning Behaviours
The learning culture is promoted through four Learning Behaviours which were developed with the children. These behaviours are: Work Hard, Don’t Give Up, Try New Things and Push Yourself. They are used to promote positive attitudes to learning and remind and empower children so that they become responsible for their own learning and future success.
 

Subject Leaders
At Ridgefield Primary we have Subject Leaders who play an important role in the success of the curriculum by developing and shaping the content of the subject, leading a regular programme of monitoring, evaluation and review across the school. They are committed to delivering high quality learning experiences throughout the curriculum and work relentlessly to ensure every child achieves the best they possibly can.
 

SEND

Our SEND Offer is explored in full detail within our SEND plan and Local Offer documents.

Early Years

Our Early Years Curriculum has been developed by our experienced Early Years team to provide a holistic approach to our children’s first few years at school.

Core Subjects

English, Maths, and Science form the core of our curriculum with a specific focus on Communication and Language, aiming to develop greater levels of understanding within these key areas. Each of these curriculum areas is explored in full detail in each of their Curriculum Plans.

We follow the Read, Write, Inc. phonics and reading scheme in our Reception and Key Stage 1 classes. 

Foundation Subjects

Our curriculum intentions, implementation plans and impact statements have been developed through a rigorous process over several years. Each of these subject areas curricula is explored in more detail in each of their Curriculum Plans:

• Computing

• Design and Technology

• Physical Education

• Personal, Social, Health, Citizenship Education

• Art and Design

• Music

• Modern Foreign Languages

• Religious Education

• History

• Geography

Impact
The impact is measured through several means:

• Outcomes for EYFS, Yr1 Phonics Check, end Of KS1, end of KS2
• Progress and attainment data for each year group
• Attendance data
• Behaviour log
• Pupil Voice
• Subject Leader monitoring

Children leave Ridgefield with a sense of belonging to a tightly knit community where they have a firm grasp of basic skills, a strong sense of moral purpose and respect for others which prepares them well for their next destination.

To find out more about how our curriculum complies with our duties in Equality Act 2010, and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014, please refer to our 'policies' page and look at our Equality Statement. 

Phonics and Reading

Our Phonics and Reading Scheme is Read, Write, Inc. We use this scheme across Early Years and Key Stage 1.  

Find out more about our Curriculum

If you are interested in finding out more about our Curriculum then please feel free to contact us. Questions about Ridgefield's Curriculum should be directed to Mrs. Trew. Just email office@ridgefield.cambs.sch.uk

Over the past 2 years we have been on a curriculum journey, exploring why we do what we do and how we do it. We have now mapped our full curriculum offer, including intent, implementation plans, enrichment and impact for all our subjects and this can be found in the document below.