Curriculum Design
At Hodnet Primary School, we have designed our curriculum to comply with our duties in the Education Equality Act and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations to ensure our curriculum is accessible for all.  

Curriculum Intent

At Hodnet Primary School, we endeavour to provide a broad and balanced, but flexible, curriculum which meets the needs of our children, and enables every child to fulfil their potential. We pride ourselves on our ability to tailor our curriculum to the interests and needs of our children and involve the children in their own learning as much as possible. Our curriculum reflects our school aims for every child; encouraging positive relationships based upon mutual trust and respect whilst maintaining a ‘can do’ strive for success attitude. Our ambitious curriculum has been designed to follow the statutory requirements for all children from the Early Years Foundation Stage and the National Curriculum. We ensure that children have the opportunity to experience the curriculum and express themselves as an individual.

                                 The key principles behind our curriculum design are based on these wishes for our children:

                                                                                     To be happy, respectful and kind

                                                                    To be confident with a strong sense of self-belief

                                                                                                  To be resilient

                                                                                To be excited and inspired by learning

                                                                To be an independent learner and a creative thinker

                                                                                          To have high aspirations

                                                                                                  To be creative

                                                To have eyes open to a world beyond their immediate surroundings

                                                                               To be an effective communicator

                                                              To have the knowledge and skills they need to succeed

Early Years Foundation Stage

We offer our youngest learners a high quality EYFS education, following the principles of the Reggio Emilia approach. The children guide their own learning based on their interests within a nurturing, welcoming environment. Our Reception learning environment is calm and open, and uses the natural environment and materials throughout, to ensure children can develop a love of both learning outdoors and natural products. 

Please visit our EYFS page for more information about national developments, our unique curriculum design, intent and implementation. 

Curriculum Implementation

We expose our children to enriching experiences, immersing them in progressive knowledge and skills and equipping them with personal characteristics required to succeed in life.

Across all areas of the curriculum, we give children an understanding not only of what they are learning, but why they are learning it. In this way, we can make children’s learning much more meaningful. We use a range of teaching styles to appeal to different children’s learning styles; these include demonstration, discussion, using visual stimuli or models, computing, research work and drama based activities. Sometimes, children will work individually, sometimes they will work in pairs and sometimes in groups, depending on the activity. Teaching in the school appeals very much to children’s learning styles, with a good mixture of visual, auditory and movement activities to help children learn. Each classroom has a digital projector and a range of other I.C.T. equipment. The children also have access to a set of laptops and I Pads which, thanks to the wireless network, can be used anywhere in the school.

We organise our learning opportunities into a themed based approach on a two year rolling programme. Our themes are broad to enable many learning opportunities to link within the topic. See our themes information and planning below. 

Core skills:

Reading is a vital skill which impacts on children’s learning across the curriculum, therefore it is at the centre of our core teaching. We apply a systematic phonetic approach to reading, using the principles from the Twinkl Phonics programme to deliver daily phonics sessions throughout Early Years and Key Stage One, and through technical delivery and intervention sessions in Key Stage Two. We continually assess and monitor the children to ensure they are taught at the appropriate phase of learning. We teach in whole class and in small groups and ensure the children are progressing through the stages at an appropriate pace. We provide additional interventions at early stages where needed. Our reading scheme offers a range of phonics books within EYFS and KS1 including incorporating Rhino Readers from Twinkl Phonics to directly correlate to our Phonics teaching. To ensure our children have a breadth of knowledge we also include non-fiction books, stories, poems and more to stimulate their senses into becoming passionate readers. We ensure our reading books in KS2 are interesting and exciting to encourage our children to be skilled readers, who enjoy reading for pleasure. We have a whole school lending library and a sharing book option for our younger children.

We follow a Mastery approach to mathematics, ensuring that all children have the opportunity to succeed. We teach our daily maths lessons through the mastery programme and work closely with our local maths hub experts. We participate in national and international problem solving events and have a passion for teaching exciting maths.

We use a Talk for Writing approach for our English teaching, using the principles of talking through a text to develop key language skills used as a core component of learning. We ensure that children are taught the specific elements of spelling and grammar through the talk for writing approach. 

We currently deliver the award winning, quality assured, cross phase Shropshire Respect Yourself Eat Better, Move More, RSE curriculum for key aspects of the RSE curriculum alongside the RSE Transition programme year 6&7 and the1Decision programme for PSHE, which we use  throughout school. Our main curriculum content is through the 1Decision national programme. These, in conjunction with online safety lessons and our updated lessons on sexting and consent (upper KS2) fulfills the curriculum requirements for RSE. Our curriculum is updated as required with national updates and safeguarding requirements.

We follow the Shropshire agreed syllabus for Religious Education, ensuring an understanding of all faiths is taught  alongside strong Christian and British Values. 

The full range of National Curriculum subjects is taught in the school as follows:

English
Mathematics
Science
Computing (Previously ICT)
History
Geography
Art
Music
Physical Education (PE)
Religious Education (RE)
Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) Including Citizenship and Relationships, Sex Education (RSE)
Modern Foreign Languages (Key Stage 2)

Further details about these subjects can be obtained from school if required. Please see the curriculum document links below for information about the learning objectives.

Curriculum Impact

We measure the impact of our curriculum intent by reviewing what we hope to achieve against what we deliver and monitoring that alongside our curriculum aims.

Our successful curriculum enables learners to demonstrate confidence, resilience, respect and independence alongside a thirst for learning. Learners feel equipped for the world around them and have the confidence to question and enquire. Our learners meet the required standards to the best of their abilities and make the progress expected of them at their pace. Our learners are well prepared for the challenges of a Secondary school curriculum and are ready to fly when they leave us!

We know our learners are respectful and kind towards others and are valued members of their community. We are proud of them all.