Highwood Primary School

Promoting resilience, achieving potential

Subjects

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.

Mathematics

Mathematics is essential to everyday life and is a central component of the curriculum of Highwood Primary School. We believe that all pupils can achieve in Maths and become confident, resilient and independent mathematicians, who are proficient in using mental and written mathematics to further their understanding of the world around them. We want our pupils to have a secure understanding of the fundamentals of mathematics: place value, calculation and understanding of shape.

We aim to develop our pupils into confident communicators, both in school and outside, so that they will be able to express their ideas, opinions and emotions. Our English curriculum will develop a sense that writing can be fun and purposeful, enabling pupils to communicate their imagination and ideas to others, and persuade them of their viewpoint on important issues.

Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language. At Highwood Primary School, we believe that spoken language is the foundation of learning, thinking and social connection. We aim for our pupils to be confident, articulate and reflective speakers and listeners who are able communicate effectively.

Reading lies at the heart of Highwood, we believe it is the foundation for future success and underpins our entire curriculum. We believe that reading is an essential life skill and we are committed to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers who are passionate about books.

Rapid, early coverage of phonic knowledge and skills will allow the pupils to have a firm foundation for decoding going into Key Stage 1 where explicit phonics teaching will continue. Teachers will use the strategies of segmenting and blending, recognising common digraphs and consonant clusters and then moving to segmenting words using knowledge of prefixes, root words and suffixes.

At Highwood Primary School, we believe that science is a lens through which pupils explore, understand, and make sense of the natural and physical world. Inspired by the Primary Science Quality Mark (PSQM) principles of practice, our curriculum is designed to engage, inspire and challenge all learners. 

Our aim is to provide an art curriculum that allows children to develop the skills that they need, to be creative and express themselves. Pupils will be exposed to a range of works and a variety of artists from around the world. This will allow them to develop their own opinions and preferences to appreciate different forms of art.

At Highwood we believe that Computing is central to the education of all children, now and in the future. We aim to give each pupil the opportunity to apply and develop their technological understanding and skills across a wide range of situations and tasks.

At Highwood, we believe that Design and Technology prepares pupils to deal with the rapidly changing world.  It encourages pupils to learn to think creatively, to meet a design brief, both as individuals and as members of a team, whilst remaining resilient to the challenges they face.

Highwood aims to encourage pupils to learn French as it is a language that is spoken widely across the world and aids their transition to secondary school.  Throughout our curriculum children are given opportunities to learn about French culture and through learning the language further improve their life chances as a global citizen.  

At Highwood Primary School, pupils will be enriched with a Geography curriculum that exposes them to cultures and locations from around our world. We want them to be keen to travel, explore and protect our planet from within our classroom and our local area. We wish to provide an insight to places they only dream of and open their eyes to the beautiful surrounding areas of our school.  

At Highwood Primary School, we want our pupils to explore a range of significant historical periods, both in Britain and in civilisations around the world. They will learn about the lives and achievements of important individuals in the past, allowing them understand the historical context in which to place the past, the present and the future. They will take part in enjoyable and memorable learning experiences, which help them develop a curiosity about the local and wider world and to understand how it came to be this way. 

At Highwood we aim to provide every pupil with a musical experience which offers a foundation on which to build a lifelong appreciation for a wide variety of genres. By exploring music through performance, composition and listening, pupils begin to recognise, not only the key elements of music such as pulse, rhythm, pitch, and basic notation.

All children at Highwood are taught PE weekly, with KS1 and KS2 having two lessons each week. These lessons will cover a range of sports, as well as topics such as gymnastics, dance and a variety of invasion and teamwork games. Fundamental movement skills underpin all of our units.

At Highwood Primary School, our aim is to ‘Promote Resilience and Achieve Potential’; therefore PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Education) plays a pivotal and fundamental part in supporting our pupil’s school experiences and achievements.

The Highwood pupil will be introduced to the beliefs, traditions and values of different religions. They will be provided with opportunities to understand and celebrate one another’s differences and form their own ideas about what they believe. Our curriculum aims to challenge pupils to ask questions about different beliefs, in order to understand them, preparing them to live in a diverse society as open-minded, tolerant individuals showing mutual respect for one another.

Curriculum