Our School

Through our English Curriculum, we strive to teach the children how important their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills will be in the real world; whether that be enjoying a fabulous book, reading a toy instruction pamphlet, performing in a play or class assembly, or writing a letter to grandparents. We have created a curriculum that encourages enthusiasm and engagement with English and provides our children with rich and varied learning opportunities that help them to become confident and enthusiastic learners.

English learning brings together phonics, reading, writing, handwriting, speaking and listening and is taught through a rich programme of learning activities. These are often linked to topic work but not always. We aim to incorporate as many ‘real’ reasons for writing as we can, to motivate and engage the children.

Alongside a daily English lesson, the children have additional time each day to listen to a story and read quietly alone or with a friend.

Reading

Books not only enrich the minds of children; they also help them relax and enjoy some precious calm
moments. Reading is a vital skill at every stage of school life and beyond. Every staff member at North Mundham Primary understands the importance of reading and is committed to promoting a love of reading from the very first day children start at the school. Reading not only allows children to access all areas of the curriculum it also enables them to transport themselves to different continents, worlds and lives.

At North Mundham we know that this is a key area for families and school to work together. We set high expectations of reading every day -home and school – and use our School Diary as a running record, which we encourage parents to write in and sign.

We teach reading in a variety of ways at North Mundham Primary School; this includes phonics teaching, reading carousel activities,1 to 1 reading and whole class reading.

As a school, we follow the phonics-based programme called ‘Read, Write, Inc’ produced by Ruth Miskin.

In Reception, the children participate in daily RWI sessions. The children are introduced to the sounds of the alphabet and learn to blend the sounds together to read words. We encourage parents to read with their child and to recognise the importance of reading to their child on a daily basis to promote an enjoyment and love of reading.

In Key Stage 1 daily RWI lessons are timetabled. In these sessions, the children look at a range of sounds across the week. This includes nonsense words, real words and common exception words. In accordance with the RWI programme, the children read ‘ditty books’ with the relevant sounds covered in their set.

The school has a fiction and non-fiction library and a wide variety of reading scheme books. Reading for pleasure is strong in our school. During the year there are additional activities such as writing competitions, meeting authors, writing poetry ‘by the canal’ and reading challenges -participation is high from all groups of pupils.

All year groups take books home to share, to practice and enjoy. Initially the reading books are from one of the several reading schemes: Rigby Star and Rigby Rocket, Collins Big Cat, Nelson and Ginn. They are colour coded by reading age, so that the children experience a wide range of styles and genre from the very beginning.

We want children to enjoy reading and have an element of choice in what they read. Choosing a book is a special time. Early readers choose an additional book from the picture book library. Once children are able to read more independently, they choose from the library or from books they have at home. Staff discuss and guide their choices to ensure success, enjoyment and development. Teachers will monitor the books children are reading and how well they are getting through a book.

Core texts for guided reading lessons are chosen carefully for each class. They are used to inspire, amaze and enjoy. The texts are often linked to topics and themes or author visits. Teachers use the texts to develop a love and excitement of reading, to encourage children to extend their vocabulary, retrieve information, develop skills of discussion and inference and to talk about storyline and author choice (words, sentence types, characterisation…). Children are read to daily and sometimes these core texts are used. At North Mundham, children are exposed to a wide range of highquality authors, rich text types and styles allowing children access to books which may be above their reading level.

Writing

We strive for children to enjoy the process of writing and sharing their writing to others. Lessons encourage children to play with words, have a go freely, spell carefully, edit thoughtfully and share enthusiastically. We teach through high quality modelling of good examples followed by the children having a go and seeing that they can be successful writers. Lessons involve learning the elements of spelling, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. We want the children to write with good sentence structure, exciting vocabulary and gain a sense of pride in what they can do as they journey through the school. Structured writing is followed by independent writing where each child has the chance to show
off what they have learnt.

We use ‘The Write Stuff’(Jane Considine) units of work twice a term, alongside work planned by the teacher, inspired by a book, a film clip, topic, a trip or world event.

We teach children the mechanics of handwriting using the Letter-join scheme. Children will begin by developing writing skills with pre-cursive patterns leading to accomplished handwriting that shows a neat cursive script. We are looking for quality, speed and stamina in handwriting, allowing children to write for longer and produce handwriting that is legible and consistently of a high standard.

At North Mundham we believe that mathematical learning should combine developing a thorough and clear understanding of concepts with the ability to reason and apply in problem solving situations and investigations.

Mathematical understanding is underpinned by the use of visual and kinaesthetic strategies which thoroughly embed concepts, enabling the children to make links with and build on previous learning.

Whilst working towards efficiency in calculation, we believe that it is important for children to understand what they are doing rather than simply following a method. Using this conceptual first approach means that children are better able to identify errors in their working out. The children will learn using the concrete, pictorial abstract approach. This can be seen in our calculation policy.

Through investigative activities, children develop strategies for solving problems and how to reason and implement their core knowledge effectively

Wherever possible, mathematical learning culminates with a practical application which demonstrates the relevance of maths in our everyday lives.

We have developed a system of Key Instant Recall Facts (KIRFs) that encourage the children to learn age appropriate skills that will support their curriculum learning. This allows us to communicate effectively around core skills that parents can support their children with each half term.

We ensure that the children receive a varied diet of mathematical input. This can include a formal lesson; a maths meeting to revise key concepts or revisit current learning objectives through a variety of methods including daily practice, singing and games; an opportunity to explore our own mathematical understanding and stretch ourselves through independent thought in ‘goal free; sessions and the opportunity to develop KIRF knowledge.

The curriculum we use is the White Rose Maths Curriculum and we follow the planning units you can find attached below. White Rose hopes to achieve the following:

We want pupils to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, to be able to reason and to solve problems. Our curriculum embraces these National Curriculum aims, and provides guidance to help pupils to become:

Visualisers – we use the CPA approach to help pupils understand mathematics and to make connections between different representations.

Describers – we place great emphasis on mathematical language and questioning so pupils can discuss the mathematics they are doing, and so support them to take ideas further.

Experimenters – as well as being fluent mathematicians, we want pupils to love and learn more about mathematics.

We firmly believe that children should enjoy mathematics and should have opportunities to succeed. We feel at North Mundham we want to equip children to succeed in life, nurture a love of exploration and create quizzical problem solvers who can reason as to why they are making choices.

During our science lessons our school uses engaging, practical experiments to help children learn about a wider range of living things, materials and nature.

We will cover the following areas to broaden their scientific knowledge:

1. Life Processes and Living Things
2. Materials and their properties
3. Physical Processes

Through investigations the children will be planning, observing, measuring and evaluating information in systematic ways. They talk about their work and its significance, and communicate ideas using a wide range of scientific language, conventional diagrams, charts and graphs.

Modern Foreign Language (MFL)

French is taught in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 to all children. The lessons are active and aim to encourage everyone to speak confidently. There is a French club available for younger children.

The main focus in art lessons is to encourage children to be creative artists and to develop the skills to enable this. Children are taught a range of skills – drawing, painting, using textiles, dyeing, printing and working with clay. They also study the work and techniques of famous artists and art from other cultures. Children work in 3D as well as 2D. You can see our artwork all around the school – you will even see it outside if you look carefully.

Each year the school holds an Arts Week to celebrate the children’s work and the culmination of this is a wonderful exhibition.

History

History is taught through topics and uses ‘enquiry’, role play, visits, first-hand experience and artefacts to bring the subject to life. Children (and teachers) dress up for special themed days, such as; being evacuees for a day and experiencing life in a new village school (writing a postcard home to Mother and Father), dressing up as Romans or Victorians and taking part in a Viking raid after writing rousing battle speeches! We hope to equip our children with the ability to ask perceptive questions, think critically and weigh up evidence. We learn about important people in history, such as Florence Nightingale and Neil Armstrong, and learn about the process of change along the way.

Geography

In Geography we hope to inspire a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. It is taught through topics and visits where possible! We visit the local area (lettuce and flower nurseries and our local village), explore Portsmouth and use interactive programmes to learn about places further afield. The children learn about river systems, local geographical features and use Ordinance Survey maps. We aim to teach children to develop geographical skills, language and knowledge, to be aware of the world around them and the importance of caring for the environment. We compare the geographical aspects of our local area with city life and learn about the mountainous landscape of North America, learning to understand the geographical similarities and differences.

Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural

Religious Education (R.E.)

Children are taught about the main world religions – Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism. They learn about religious festivals, customs and ways of worship. Lessons encourage positive attitudes towards, and respect for, the beliefs of others and in doing so encourage understanding of the similarities and differences between people that are part of our rich culture.

Lifeskills

All children follow a programme of Citizenship, Personal, Social and Health Education which in our school we call ‘Lifeskills’. This recognizes the importance of the whole child and develops children’s relationships and social skills. Keeping safe, friendship, anti-bullying, healthy living and making well informed choices are regularly revisited as age appropriate.

In the second half of KS2 Sex and Relationship education is part of our Lifeskills curriculum. Our aims in these lessons are to inform the children, maintain high self esteem and self respect and promote sensitivity and responsibility as children grow.

The school is proud of its strong music tradition. In lessons children are taught to sing, to listen to music, to play percussion and be actively involved in composing and performing.

In Year 4 all children learn to play the clarinet in class music lessons with specialist teachers.

In addition to curriculum music children may learn to play an instrument; woodwind, brass, violin, piano, singing, drums and guitar lessons are available.

The school has a choir and a very successful wind band supported by the West Sussex Music Trust.

At North Mundham we encourage all children to participate in sport through fostering a team spirit and an enjoyment of sport. The PE curriculum includes: athletics, dance, games, gymnastics, outdoor and adventurous activities and swimming.

Approximately 2 hours per week of curriculum time is given to P.E. and in addition there is a wide range of extra curricular sports. The school takes part in a wide variety of competitive and fun-based inter-school tournaments and events.

The school takes advantage of specialist sport coaching including most recently; football, cricket, tennis, canoeing and dance.

In Design and Technology, our children undertake a range of inspiring projects where they use their creativity and imagination to design and make, problem solve and evaluate their products. We make links with other curriculum areas such as maths, science and computing whilst using practical skills to develop designs as individuals and members of a team. We teach the knowledge and skills needed to bring a design to life whilst encouraging them to build confidence in decision making relating to tool selection, material choice and becoming critical thinkers. Pupils work on projects that allow then to understand the significance of high quality design and technology across a range of contexts and the contribution it makes to the creativity, culture, wealth and well-being of the nation. 

We live in a digital world and technology is essential in all areas of our everyday lives.  At North Mundham we aim to equip our children with the knowledge and skills they need to be digitally literate, so lessons are taught both discretely and across the curriculum to make links wherever possible. Our computing curriculum focuses on computer science where the children are taught how digital systems work and how to put this knowledge into practice when programming.  Online safety is also extremely important to us and we give this high priority in our teaching sequences, so our children are aware of what they can do to keep themselves safe and what they should do if they are unsure of their safety.

Our lessons focus on five key strands:

– staying safe online

– evaluating digital content

– programming

– using data

– algorithms and debugging

Initially children are taught basic skills when using information technology, such as using tablets and desktop computers, opening programs and using digital devices such as cameras and floor based robots.  The children then develop these skills by using information technology to present their ideas creatively and create programs.  We follow the Barefoot Computer scheme of work which we supplement with additional e-safety work to offer a broad and balanced curriculum.

We are fortunate to have our own enclosed woodland and a member of staff trained to deliver high quality ‘Forest Schools’ lessons. In Forest Schools children develop their appreciation and understanding of the environment, learn practical outdoor skills and work cooperatively together developing communication, trust and problem solving.

At North Mundham, our pupils have plenty of opportunities to work with and learn about food, focussing on nutrition and healthy eating. We aim to instil a love of cooking which is a crucial life skill, whilst embedding the importance of hygiene and safety around food preparation. Children have many opportunities to develop and prepare healthy, balanced dishes, learn and develop cooking techniques and know about origins of food.