Welcome to Curriculum
Curriculum Rationale
We recognise we are privileged to be involved right at the start of your children’s learning journey. We are passionate about promoting and instilling a curiosity and love for learning through an inspiring and challenging curriculum preparing children to become lifelong learners.
At Robert Miles Infant School, we have four whole school threads which we aim to develop in all aspects of school life, where possible:
- Prioritise developing children’s 'Positive Attitudes for Learning (PAL) by developing positive learning behaviours and attitudes, focusing on engagement, motivation and critical thinking.
- Place reading at the heart of everything we do by developing confident readers, instilling a love of reading and providing purposeful cross-curricular reading opportunities.
- Promote equality and diversity, with the aim of providing an equitable start for our children, where commonalities and differences are valued and celebrated. Our pupils will develop cultural awareness through a diverse and inclusive curriculum.
- Develop an understanding of how to care for our environment by supporting children to take an interest and responsibility, as global citizens and custodians of our planet.
For each subject, we have identified some age-appropriate subject specific concepts, focusing on the 'big ideas' that we believe are important to teach and develop across all year groups. Click here for an overview of the whole school threads and subject concepts.
Our curriculum aims to be creative and flexible, responding to the children’s interests and the world around them to ensure that learning is meaningful and relevant, whilst ensuring there is coverage and progression of key skills. We realise the importance of every minute of every day that the children spend with us, and fill it with rich, first-hand experiences that seek to challenge, engage and stimulate the children, providing the highest possible standards of education to raise aspirations.
We know that children need a mixture of knowledge and skills to be independent in their learning and achieve this through different styles of learning, offering opportunities to be imaginative, explore the environment and ask questions to shape their learning. As well as discrete lessons in areas such as maths, phonics and spelling we offer cross curricular opportunities where children can apply the basic skills.
Our school provides a safe, secure environment where we actively teach and promote attitudes to learning such as resilience and willingness to learn. Our spiritual, moral, social and cultural education ensures we help children to explore their feelings and beliefs and to respect and celebrate diversity, appreciating the uniqueness and successes of all and the motto of ‘Work hard, be kind’ can be felt in everything we do.
To find out more, click to read....
- Reception overview of the curriculum - Long Term Plan
- Year 1 overview of the curriculum - Long Term Plan
- Year 2 overview of the curriculum - Long Term Plan
Maths
Click here to read a detailed Maths intent.
At Robert Miles we are beginning the mastery approach to teaching maths. This means that children are taught using carefully selected models and images to support their learning. Their lessons are carefully structured to move in very small steps, and to include a variety of ways of presenting the maths. Our overall aim is for children to keep up with the maths for their year group and not fall into a position of catch-up.
Much of our planning is based on the White Rose scheme of Learning that is recommended by the National Centre for Excellence in teaching Maths.
Click here find detailed progression documents on our maths page.
Reading
Click here to read our English intent
We use the Read Write Inc scheme to teach reading. Read Write Inc. Phonics teaches children to read accurately and fluently with good comprehension. They learn to form each letter, spell correctly, and compose their ideas step-by-step.
We actively teach reading in the lessons each day and send books home for children to practice.
Children bring home a banded books to practice (which will contain many sounds the children know). They will also bring home a Read Write Inc book bag book which will closely match exactly what they have been learning in their reading lessons. They also bring home a 'Family library' book, which is a book that you can enjoy together as a family and may be above the children's own reading ability- great for a bedtime story.
Head to the Literacy Page and Resources for more information - click here.
Click here find detailed progression documents on our English page.
RE
RE aims to give children the knowledge, critical thinking skills, open minded and respectful attitude with which to investigate the world of religion and beliefs, and make their own decisions about what this means to them, whilst empathising with what it means to those who hold those beliefs.
According to the latest guidance from the government, every school needs to have a broad and balanced curriculum that:
• promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, social, mental and physical development of pupils
• prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life
• promotes British values.
Schools also have statutory responsibility to promote community cohesion (Education Act, 2006), and have to demonstrate that they are “Protecting children from the risk of radicalisation, from whatever source” (The Prevent duty – departmental advice for schools and childcare providers”, June 2015).
RE plays an important part in enabling these responsibilities.
RE is a statutory subject which sits alongside the English National Curriculum. RE is a statutory subject in all schools in England, except for those children withdrawn at the request of their parents. (Education Act 2002, section 80). It is parents’ legal right to withdraw their children from Religious Education.
To teach RE at Robert Miles Infants we use the Discovery RE programme. This is an enquiry-based, teaching programme that develops children’s critical thinking skills and their knowledge and understanding of people and their beliefs, religious or otherwise.
Content is taught using four steps:
• Step 1: Engagement: the children’s own human experience is explored to act as bridge from their world (which may or may not include religion) into the world of the religion being studied.
• Step 2: Investigation: over approximately 3 lessons the teacher will guide the children to explore and investigate appropriate subject knowledge relevant to that question of enquiry.
• Step 3: Evaluation: An assessment activity enables each child to show their thinking and the depth of critical evaluation.
• Step 4: Expression: This refers the children back to the starting point of their own experience and allows them to reflect on whether their findings have influenced their own thinking.
For more information click here.
Personal Development
At Robert Miles Infants we bring together PSHE Education, emotional literacy, social skills and spiritual development to enable our children to become healthy, independent and responsible members of a society.
Our PSHE teaching tackles many of the moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up and works hand in hand with our teaching of British Values. We provide our children with opportunities for them to learn about rights and responsibilities and appreciate what it means to be a member of a diverse society.
PSHE teaching should encourage children to contribute fully to the life of their school beyond the curriculum. In doing so they learn to recognise their own worth, work well with others and become increasingly responsible for their own learning.
By the end of their Infant school years, our pupils will be able to understand and respect our diversity and differences so that they can go on to form the effective, fulfilling relationships that are an essential part of life and learning.
Core Principles for the Teaching of PSHE at Robert Miles Infant School
Pupils at Robert Miles Infant School learn through a PSHE curriculum that will:
- explore, clarify and if necessary challenge, their own and others’ values, attitudes and beliefs.
- give children the confidence to ask questions, draw on their own experience, express their views and opinions in a safe and supportive environment.
- develop positive personal attributes such as resilience, self-confidence, self-esteem, and empathy.
- Be progressive, building on prior knowledge.
- ensure their accurate use and understanding of specific vocabulary related to emotional literacy
- empower them to make real decisions about their lives, to take part in activities where they can demonstrate their ability to take responsibility for their decisions.
Curriculum Documents:
A brief overview of what is being taught in each year group, each term:
Detailed breakdown of progression and coverage of core knowledge and skills to be taught in each term, over the year:
PSHE - Curriculum Plan - Reception (EYFS)
Latest News
- Hello Yellow
Thursday 10th October 2024 (Whole School - 09/10/2024) - Harvest Festival
Thank you to everyone who joined our Harvest celebrations on Wednesday. (Whole School - 04/10/2024) - Open Days for Reception (September 2025)
For parents / carers looking for a Reception school place for their child in September 2025 (Whole School - 18/09/2024)