Beddington Park follows a curriculum which based on the content of the National Curriculum.
It means that we have taken the National Curriculum as our firm base, and then built around it a rich and diverse range of activities, investigations, opportunities and visits which perfectly complement the interests, learning styles, location and experiences of our children and community! All of this combines to provide a supremely engaging and effective package of learning, leading to exceptionally successful outcomes for all of our pupils.
Year groups are categorised into what is known as Key Stages, with Year 1 and 2 being Key Stage 1 and Years 3, 4, 5 & 6 being Key Stage 2. The National Curriculum for both key stages consists of the core subjects: mathematics, English, science and computing; and the foundation subjects; history, geography, design & technology, art and design, music and P.E.
Success for All makes reading the cornerstone of the curriculum. For children to succeed in school, they must be reading at the national curriculum stage of learning by the end of each year group. They also need effective teachers, so SFA includes intensive professional development, ongoing coaching support, and data tools to give teachers feedback on how children are learning and where they need additional teaching or extra help. SFA involves the whole community in implementing effective teaching that is based on the best research on what works. Success for All makes learning fun and engaging for children and helps teachers become knowledgeable, skilled instructional leaders.
At Beddington Park Academy we believe that for children to succeed in school, they must be reading at the national curriculum stage of learning by the end of each year group. To enable this, the school uses ‘Success for All’ (SFA) which is an evidence based school improvement strategy.
Our phonics strategy is linked to our Success for All curriculum and is a systematic phonics programme that begins in our Early Years and continues and into KS1 and KS2 (where needed). Our phonics and early reading strategy moves seamlessly into our reading curriculum in KS1 & KS2, building on the key skills needed to be fluent and successful readers.
At Beddington Park Academy, we take a mastery approach to the teaching of mathematics. The fundamental principle is that all children can be successful at mathematics when given high quality instruction and meaningful support. Children progress through the learning at broadly the same pace, with opportunities for faster graspers to increase their understanding through exploring each area of the curriculum in depth. We want to ensure that all children have a solid understanding of the subject: the ability to solve a calculation is not enough; children must be able to demonstrate and articulate their understanding of the mathematical concept. With this in mind, our children receive a maths curriculum which is designed to develop confidence, greater independence and ultimately life-long skills. Our teaching promotes mathematical fluency; greater opportunity for reasoning and developed understanding of solving problems in a variety of different contexts. We place a very strong emphasis on recognising each individual’s particular strengths and areas for development. As a result of this, we pride ourselves on providing the children with a rich and meaningful Maths Curriculum.
Here at Beddington Park Academy we believe that all children have the right to a broad and balanced curriculum that enables them to develop both as a collaborative team member as well as an independent thinker. Discovery promotes a project based approached to the wider curriculum where children are immersed within one subject area each half term through a creative, hands-on and engaging style. Subjects are taught in a way that allows children to delve deep into the knowledge and understanding suitable for their age range. Additionally, it allows our proactive learners to critically think and reflect on their learning whilst developing the skills necessary to grown into enthusiastic, aspiring and proud citizens of our community. The focus of our learning in on reflection, discussion and reasoning.
At Beddington Park Academy, we teach a weekly session of P4C. Philosophy for Children (P4C) focuses on developing children’s thinking and communication skills. A ‘community of enquiry’ is developed to discuss a variety of different issues. In each session, the children are shown a stimulus and through careful facilitation, the children share their ideas and develop their skills to ask open ended questions and build on each other’s points of view. Over time, the outcome is for children to grow into caring, critical, collaborative and creative thinkers who are able to perceive issues from a range of viewpoints. This is done through the use of sentence and question stems to model how to articulate their thoughts more clearly. These skills aim to boost each child’s self-esteem and studies suggest that the skills learnt in these lessons contribute to learning gains across the curriculum. Additionally, through P4C we aim to address global issues and tackle social injustices.
The computing aspect of our curriculum is embedded within our broader ‘Discovery’ curriculum.
Our children benefit from a broad and balanced Physical Education (PE) programme carefully designed to inspire learners to:
Physical Literacy is reinforced through daily active playtimes and our extensive extra-curricular and competitive school sport programme.
Children at Beddington explore Religious beliefs & customs through two different approaches. They learn core content, knowledge and beliefs through stand-alone units at key points throughout the year. They also explore, discuss and share their thinking on different themes/ideas linked to RE within their Philosophy for Children lessons each week. The aim being that whilst children learn different aspects of Religious Education throughout their time at Beddington, they are able to keep their thinking alive throughout regular Philosophy for Children lessons – which also make links to other aspects of their learning too.
At Beddington Park Academy, our intention is that all children develop a passion for music based on listening, singing, performing and discussing a wide range of musical styles, historical periods and traditions. Our aim at Beddington Park Academy is that our children develop a life-long love of music. We are committed to ensuring our pupils have the skills, knowledge and confidence to access, create and enjoy all aspects of music.
Our curriculum is designed to ensure all children:
Our delivery is through our teaching blocks of music, assemblies and specialist led lessons.
Children in KS2 have the opportunity to begin to learn a new language, French. Knowing the majority of our feeder secondary schools teach French as one of their key languages, we want our children to have the opportunity to begin to learn the basics that will provide them with the confidence and desire to learn more by the time they start their secondary education. In KS1, children don’t learn French as we are wanting them to fully master their own English language, which they will then be able to apply more fully when they reach KS2.
Our PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) curriculum ensures all of our children develop the skills and knowledge to be successful in today’s world; to be safe and healthy individuals and understand their place in the community, to be confident and certain in their right to be heard. The curriculum also ensures our children are able to have healthy relationships and friendships and understand the qualities of healthy relationships; we teach our children to always speak to adults they trust if they feel unsafe. As well as covering the statutory content of the Relationship Education curriculum, our PSHE curriculum covers economic wellbeing, careers and enterprise education, as well as education for personal safety, including assessing and managing risk (including online). This, alongside P4C and Early Morning Work (Global Citizenship) in particular, enables our children to become healthy, independent and responsible members of society. It helps them understand how they are developing personally and socially, and tackles many of the moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up.
