NATIONAL CURRICULUM FOR KEY STAGE 2
• promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and
• prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.
National Curriculum 2014 provides pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge that they need to be educated citizens. It introduces pupils to the best that has been thought and said; and helps engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.
National Curriculum 2014 is just one element in the education of every child at Cavendish. There is time and space in the school day and in each week, term and year to range beyond the national curriculum specifications. The national curriculum provides an outline of core knowledge around which teachers can develop exciting and stimulating lessons to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills as part of the wider school curriculum.
STRUCTURE OF THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM
Key Stage 2
Learning environments
Classroom management reflects our aim to encourage children to be independent, well organised and to develop good learning behaviours. This will require flexibility in the organisation of furniture and creativity in learning. Each classroom promotes a positive learning ethos, which is calming and open ended.
Each learning environment will contain working walls in English and Maths to aid children in their learning. The classroom environment is used to create a safe working environment which promotes good behaviours for learning and celebrates success.
English
The overarching aim for English at Cavendish is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. The national curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:
- read easily, fluently and with good understanding
- develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
- acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
- appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
- write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
- use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
- are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate
We plan our writing lessons around either our whole class high-quality text or the Connected Curriculum topic we are covering, where possible linking the two. The learning sequence starts by identifying the grammar we are learning through authentic texts, analysing the affect of the grammar for the reader and putting the skill into practise. The children will then do some imitated writing using the skill, in a variety of ways, giving them a chance to explore how it is to be the writer. The children will then complete an independent piece of writing where they will show the skills they have been learning, as well as prior skills acquired, through a variety of text types. They will edit and improve their writing as part of this process, through verbal, written and peer feedback they will be developing these skills continually in writing.
Maths
Our principal aim when teaching Maths in the Primary Phase is to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum 2014 for the teaching and learning of mathematics. It is also our intent to give pupils a consistent and smooth progression of learning in all key areas of Mathematics across all year groups and for all learners.
Concrete, Visual, Abstract:
A key principle behind the Singapore Maths and Maths Mastery is based on the concrete, pictorial and abstract approach. Pupils are first introduced to an idea or skill by acting it out with real objects (a hands- on approach). Pupils are then moved onto the pictorial stage, where they are encouraged to relate the concrete understanding to pictorial representations. The final abstract stage is a chance for pupils to represent problems by using mathematical notion. Whilst our intent is to apply the CPA approach to all maths learning, it is not always noted further up the year groups. However, it is expected that the CPA approach is used continuously in all new learning and calculations even when not noted.
Pupils are taught strategies to develop and strengthen their mental agility on a daily basis through our Number Zoo sessions. They also need to be able to apply written calculation skills in order to:
- represent work that has been done practically
- support, record and explain mental calculation
- keep track of steps in a longer task
- work out calculations that are too difficult to do mentally
Across Key Stage 2, pupils are taught using a Maths Mastery approach to develop their ability to solve a range of problems, including with simple fractions and decimal place value. Teaching will also ensure that pupils draw with increasing accuracy and develop mathematical reasoning so they can analyse shapes and their properties, confidently describing the relationships between them. Pupils will also be taught to use measuring instruments with accuracy and make connections between measure and number.
By the end of Year 4, pupils should have memorised their multiplication tables up to and including the 12 multiplication table, showing precision and fluency in their work. Children should also be able to recall the division facts for their multiplication tables. Pupils should read and spell mathematical vocabulary correctly and confidently, using their growing word reading knowledge and their knowledge of spelling.
Key Stage 2
Reading
At Cavendish, we map out high-quality books for each year group to be used across Reading and Writing lessons.
We use the whole class texts each day in our Reading lessons to support the teaching of the main reading strategies: summarising, inference, prediction, making connections, clarifying, evaluating and questioning. Each week we focus on one of the reading strategies, with the teacher modelling how to use the strategy within the whole class book context. The children then use sentence stems to practise the reading strategy as the continue reading the whole class book in pairs. Two days a week children read a book chosen from the shelves of ‘Recommended Reads’ as seen below. These are diverse books that encompass a range of genres and expose children to many different authors.
Phonics
We continue our Linguistic Phonics programme through the whole of Key Stage Two. The rationale for Linguistic Phonics is that children are taught to understand the relationship between spoken language and written words. It starts with what the children naturally acquire, spoken language, and teaches them the relationship between sound-spelling correspondences. Teaching children to read through Linguistic Phonics allows them to develop their decoding skills; this supports children in learning to blend graphemes (letters) for reading, segment phonemes (sounds) for spelling and manipulate phonemes (sounds) to develop accuracy in reading and spelling. Linguistic Phonics teaches the concept that all sounds can be spelled. We therefore do not promote silent letters, magic letters, or memorising whole words by sight. We appreciate parental support and ask that you read with your children in this way, encouraging children to use their decoding skills to read and spell.
Our teachers and teaching assistants receive training to deliver the Sounds-Write phonics programme. Sounds-Write takes children through systematic, incremental steps to teach children the 44 sounds in the English language and their multiple spellings.
Wider Curriculum
2Curriculum Planning
At Cavendish, the children are taught History, Geography, Science, Art, Design and Technology and computing through a thematic approach.
Each term, the curriculum is underpinned by a key enquiry question ‘Why do we play with different toys as we grow older?’, ‘ Can party food be healthy?’
At the beginning of each theme there is a ‘Stunning Start’ to introduce the key question. The middle of each theme is celebrated with a ‘Marvelous Middle’. This is an event that inspires the children and keeps the theme alive for them. A ‘Marvelous Middle’ can involve a visitor or a trip. At the end of each theme the children will have an opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills acquired through the celebration of a ‘Fabulous Finish’.
Educational workshops and visits are an integral part of our curriculum offer and an enrichment activity is planned during each theme. This can be in the form of a visitor, workshop in school or trip linked to the theme. Pupils experience ‘real-life’ opportunities through having these opportunities. Some of the enrichment activities the children have enjoyed this year include; Battle Abbey, The Toy Museum, The Motor Museum and workshops on Chinese dancing.
Click here to download the 2021 – 22 Wider Curriculum Overview
%
of pupils achieved 9-4 in English.
After School programs
%
of pupils achieved 9-4 in Maths.
Years Established
Celebrating Success
The staff and governors of Cavendish wish to congratulate all of our Year 11 pupils for the fantastic GCSE grades they have achieved this year.
Headteacher, Peter Marchant said, "The grades that our pupils have achieved are a reflection of their hard work throughout their time at the school and they can rightly feel proud of what they have achieved through these challenging times."