At Purleigh Community Primary School, we have developed a curriculum that we believe will give our pupils the best possible chance of becoming well-rounded, happy individuals who are prepared for the next steps of their lives. Varied topics, making use of local history and geography, are designed to engage and inspire the children, providing them with necessary skills, knowledge and understanding whilst keeping literacy high on the agenda with opportunities for writing in a range of contexts. 

Our curriculum is enriched through a diverse range of carefully chosen, exciting educational visits.  Visitors are encouraged into school regularly to enhance further the curriculum opportunities and our children enjoy enrichment weeks with a variety of themes including STEM, multicultural and enterprise activities

Lessons are taught using a range of approaches and resources in order to make learning accessible to different learning styles and parental input is encouraged through lesson visits and a mixture of homework tasks.

If you would like to discuss our curriculum please contact Mr. Stotter, Mrs. Garrett or Mr Coker via the school office.

Our class topics are as follows:

Year R - Marvellous Me, Let's Celebrate!, How Can We Help?, Tell Me a Story., How Does Your Garden Grow? and Minibeasts
Year 1 - Awesome Autumn, A Toy's Story and Wonderful Water
Year 2 - Time Travellers, Saints and Dragons and Feathers, Flight and Flying Saucers  
Year 3 - Invaders and Settlers, The Marvels and Mysteries of the Mediterranean and Rainforests
Year 4 - The Marvellous Maya, Somewhere to Settle and Smashing Saxons
Year 5 - Ancient Egyptians, Wonderful Wanderers and Britain at War
Year 6 - Shakespeare and The Tudors (whole term), The City of Chelmsford, The Americas, The British Empire - from inception in Tudor times to its demise with Partition in India (1947)

Art

Our Art Curriculum contributes to the development of the whole child, not just creatively but also by exploring aesthetics, emotions, spirituality and intellectual and social themes. It creates a sense of enjoyment and purpose both in and of itself and via cross-curricular links. Through the use of colour, texture, form, pattern, different materials and processes, it enables children to express themselves and to communicate what they see, feel and think. Art offers children the opportunity to learn about the visual world and how artists from Britain and the wider world have interpreted it, throughout history and within different cultures.

Computing

At Purleigh School, we ensure that the Computing Curriculum is accessible to all, maximising the development of every child’s ability and academic achievement in this subject, We have designed a computing curriculum that develops pupils’ learning right from the Early Years, resulting in the acquisition of knowledge of the world around them.  This progresses to incorporating appropriate subject knowledge, skills and understanding as set out in the National Curriculum so that children can reach and exceed their potential in the key strands of information technology, computer science and digital literacy. 

It is vitally important to us that we prepare our children for the challenges posed by an increasingly digital British society; Internet 
Safety plays a central role in our teaching, ensuring that our children are fully aware of potential risks and are up-skilled in accessing the information and resources that they need .

Design and Technology

Through the study of Design and Technology, children combine practical skills with an understanding of material, aesthetic, social and environmental issues which helps them to prepare for the developing world. It should assist children in developing a greater awareness and understanding of how everyday products are designed and made. Our Design and Technology Curriculum encourages children to become creative problem-solvers, both as individuals and as part of a team. We want to support all children to become discriminating and informed consumers and potential innovators. The children are also given opportunities to reflect upon and evaluate past and present design technology, its uses and its effectiveness, to become skilled and safe in the use of materials, tools and equipment and to develop useful life skills e.g. food technology.

English

At Purleigh Community Primary School, we believe that our English Curriculum should instil and develop a love of literacy through reading, writing and discussion.  We support pupils by encouraging the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information, and developing an appreciation for our rich and varied literary heritage.  Pupils are supported in the acquisition of a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and the knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language.  We want pupils to flourish, to feel empowered and to be inspired to be confident readers, writers, speakers and listeners, able to adapt their language and style for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences.

Geography

At Purleigh Community Primary School, our Geography Curriculum is designed to provoke and answer questions about the human and physical world, encouraging children to develop a greater understanding of the world and our place in it. It supports children in developing specific skills relevant to this area of the curriculum together with a range of investigation and problem solving skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas. These can be used further to promote children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. We seek to inspire in children a curiosity and fascination about the world, its people and places which will remain with them for the rest of their lives.  We aim to promote children’s interest and understanding about places, people, resources, built environments, together with an understanding of the Earth’s mountains, rivers and oceans.

History

At Purleigh Community Primary School, we have developed a curriculum to stimulate the pupils’ interest for learning about the past and help them gain a detailed knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. We aim to develop our pupils’ understanding about the life of people who lived before us and how lives have changed over time. We teach children a sense of chronology so that they can better understand when historical events happened around the world and how these events have influenced life today. History complements other Humanities subjects such as Religious Education and Geography; these subjects assist pupils in understanding other cultures, how places have changed over time and how they have had an impact on historical events. Through these subjects, children can appreciate and understand their place in a modern, multicultural Britain and, by considering how people lived in the past, they are better able to make sense how we came to this point in time. We teach our pupils to investigate historical events and, by so doing, help them to develop skills of enquiry, selection, analysis and interpretation.

Maths

Our Maths Curriculum at Purleigh is designed to ensure that children are taught to become competent mathematicians who can explain their reasoning and show their understanding using a variety of different representations whilst continually repeating key basic skills. In line with the 2014 National Curriculum for Maths, we work to ensure that all children become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, are able to reason mathematically and can solve problems by applying their mathematics.

 At Purleigh, we strive to embed the skills and processes necessary to enable children to use and apply their maths learning in a variety of contexts.  We aim to develop children’s enjoyment of maths and provide opportunities for children to build a conceptual understanding of maths as well as apply their knowledge to everyday problems and challenges. Our approach to the teaching of mathematics develops children's ability to work both independently and collaboratively. Through mathematical talk and reasoning, children will develop the ability to articulate and discuss their thinking. Within our school, the skills are embedded within maths lessons and developed consistently over time.  By teaching maths through a mastery approach, we aim for children to achieve the deep and deepest levels or learning.

We are committed to ensuring that children are able to recognise the importance of maths in the wider world and that they are also able to use their mathematical skills and knowledge confidently in their lives in a range of different contexts. By the end of Key Stage Two, children will leave our school prepared for the next step in their mathematical education.

Modern Foreign Languages

The Modern Foreign Languages curriculum at Purleigh aims to ensure that all children have high quality languages education, which fosters children’s curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. We are committed to ensuring that competence in another language enables children to interpret, create and exchange meaning within and across cultures. It also helps children develop skills that will open further opportunities later in life.

The teaching of Spanish in KS2 provides an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and lays the foundations for further foreign language teaching at KS3. Some basic elements of Spanish will start to be shared in KS1, celebrating our diverse curriculum across the whole school. All pupils will be exposed to the richness of modern foreign languages through signage and everyday use around the school, as well as participate in wider social and cultural fun experiences. 

Music

At Purleigh Primary School, it is our intent that we make music an enjoyable learning experience. We believe in the power of music and recognise the important role that music can play in people's lives. We encourage children to participate in a variety of musical experiences and show case their skills to a wider audience - such as assemblies, Nativity and end of year performances and Barnardo’s concerts - through which we aim to build the confidence of all children. Using the Charanga Scheme, our teaching focuses on developing the children’s ability to understand rhythm and follow a beat. Through singing songs, children learn about the structure and organisation of music. We teach them to listen and to appreciate different forms of music. Children develop descriptive language skills in music lessons when learning about how music can represent different feelings, emotions and narratives. We also teach technical vocabulary such as volume, pitch, beat and rhythm and encourage children to discuss music using these terms.  The scheme supports pupil progress in an enjoyable, engaging way so that students embed the musical skills of listening and appraising, composing and performing.

Our intent is to promote a love of music and singing across a broadened curriculum, and build a musical curriculum which develops learning and results in the acquisition of knowledge and improved well-being.

Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship

At Purleigh, we believe that P.S.H.E is part of a life-long learning process which enables the development of positive attitudes towards self and others. It helps to develop a range of knowledge, skills and attributes they need to keep themselves healthy and safe, and prepared for life and work, managing life’s challenges and making the most of life’s opportunities.  We aim to prepare for the children at Purleigh to lead confident, healthy and independent lives as informed, active and responsible citizens. As a whole-school approach, we encourage the children to embrace responsibilities and roles, such as reading buddies, and take part in a range of practical roles and activities within the school council.

Physical Education

Purleigh Primary School recognises the value of Physical Education. We fully adhere to the aims of the National Curriculum for Physical Education to ensure that all children develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities, understand how to lead healthy, active lives, engage in competitive sports and activities and are physically active for sustained periods of time.

Our aim is to improve and increase the quality and quantity of P.E. and  physical activity for all children, to show how P.E. and  physical activity can enhance children's attainment and achievement and to create pathways for them to continue to be active beyond school. We recognise the broad range of skills that contribute to all facets of physical activity and endeavour to provide opportunities for all children to experience a variety of games and activities that cater to these diverse skill-sets.

Religious Education

At Purleigh we are committed to providing our children with a learning environment in which they have the opportunity to develop their knowledge and understanding of religions while contributing to their spiritual, moral social and cultural development. In the E.Y.F.S., R.E. is taught using R.E.-related early learning goals, whilst in K.S.1 and K.S.2 our curriculum follows the Essex Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education.

We seek to ensure that all pupils in our school are educated to develop:

-spiritually

-academically

-emotionally

-morally

Through this, we aim to enable them to understand themselves and others better and to cope with the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities of living in a rapidly changing, multicultural world.

We recognise that the teaching of religious beliefs usually begins in the home, and that carers and parents have a valuable role to play in assisting in their child’s learning.

Science

At Purleigh, we recognise the importance of science in every aspect of daily life. As one of the core subjects, we give the teaching and learning of science the prominence it requires. We encourage children to be inquisitive throughout their time at Purleigh, and aim to equip pupils with knowledge, skills and understanding. We endeavour to ensure that the science curriculum we provide will give children the confidence and motivation to continue to develop their skills further into the next stage of education and adulthood.

The science curriculum fosters a healthy curiosity in children about our universe and promotes respect for the living and non-living. Throughout the programmes of study, the children will acquire and develop the key knowledge that has been identified within each unit and across each year group, as well as the application of scientific skills. We ensure that the 'Working Scientifically' skills are built-on and developed throughout children's time at the school, so that they can apply their knowledge of science when using equipment, conducting experiments, building arguments and explaining concepts confidently. We encourage pupils to ask questions and be curious about the world around them.