The Curriculum at Shepley
The Curriculum at Shepley
Our overall aim for the curriculum at Shepley First is to support our children to develop the skills they will need in order to live successful and fulfilling lives in this 21st Century world. These skills include:
- Resilience to cope with change and challenge
- Emotional literacy and the ability to show empathy and compassion when interacting with others
- Knowledge about the diversity of the world
- Independent thinking and the skills to make decisions
- Opportunities to risk take and be adventurous
- Understanding the importance of spending time outdoors in the natural environment
- Debating, listening to and reflecting upon the views of others
- Being knowledgeable about mental health and wellbeing
We want to develop the young children and people in our care to:
- become globally aware
- be self-aware
- be able to critique, question and challenge
- be curious and inquisitive
- be able to articulate their feelings and emotions,
- be responsible and caring
- be able to manage their own mental health and wellbeing
We know that our children learn best when they are immersed in a topic or theme for a sustained period of time. To ensure depth of learning and a deeper level of understanding of the subject content, we teach Science for a full afternoon every week and alternate the teaching of History and Geography each half term and teach Art and design and Design and Technology in the same way. This enables these subjects to be taught for a full afternoon each week for the duration of the half term.
Maths and English are taught daily, to ensure key skills are practiced and consolidated, but themes and contexts for teaching and learning are sustained across a number of weeks to again ensure the depth of understanding. We use high quality texts to provide contexts for Reading and Writing, and have used the ‘power of reading’ scheme to support us in choosing texts which are rich, diverse and challenging.
RE, PSHE, Computing, French and Music are planned into the timetable to ensure all are taught within a two-week period and PE is taught twice a week. We ensure all children have access to the whole curriculum, providing adult support and differentiated resources wherever necessary. We place absolute importance on learning to read, so that all children have the opportunity to experience the breadth of opportunity that this brings.
Our children tell us that they learn best when they are active and through hands on experiences. Our curriculum includes visits, visitors, theme days and practical activities to help the children better understand key concepts and commit knowledge to long term memory.
As Shepley is a rural village with a high proportion of wealth and low cultural diversity, it is important for us to ensure our children are not only aware of but are knowledgeable about the diversity of Britain and the wider world and consider the experiences of people of colour or whose ethnicity is different to their own, those living in poverty, people with disabilities and with additional needs and those from LBGTQ+ families. We ensure that curriculum resources reflect the diversity of society and explicitly teach the children about diversity, what it means and how they can challenge discrimination.