Curriculum

The Connected Curriculum
 

We believe that the purpose of the school’s curriculum is to educate the whole child.

They need to develop literacy and mathematical skills to enable them to make sense of the world they live in and apply these to all aspects of the school curriculum.

They need to be taught art, design and musical skills to lead to an awareness and appreciation of human achievement and the pleasure in creating.

Our children live in a variety of communities and families that are diverse, with many differences as well as things in common. The communities are made up of different sexes, different ages, different races, different religious beliefs and different cultural beliefs.

We want all children in schools in our MAT community to grow up respecting, tolerating and understanding the diversity and richness that all these different communities can offer to society. They are taught to do this to give them an understanding of life and the world that is broad and balanced and rich in experiences.

They also need to understand how their community is part of the wider community of their town, their county, their country and their world. They need geographical and historical skills, knowledge and understanding to understand how their communities evolved and are evolving.

Above all, we want our Curriculum to be exciting and engaging so that all children enjoy learning in all our schools.

Jane Bass

Connected Learning Trust CEO

Below are our curriculum maps which outline the taught aspects of the children's learning. Cherry Tree staff design their curriculum based on the updated National Curriculum. We also work closely with our Multi-Academy Trust, Connected Learning, and dove tail the teaching of foundation subjects with key skills such as independence.

Our subject leads at Cherry Tree are:

English - Mrs L Harris and Mrs L Dunn
Maths - Mr R Bullivant

Science - Mrs L Harris

Connected Curriculum - Ms C Butler

If you have any questions about the curriculum, please make an appointment to discuss with your child's class teacher.

Below you will find information regarding our approach to the curriculum, our curriculum policies, and the Reading Scheme that we use. Parents can find out more about our curriculum at Parents Evenings, via newsletters and home school diaries, and at open afternoons or parent assemblies. If you would like any further information please speak to your child’s teacher at the end of the school day.

Connected Curriculum

The Connected Curriculum is a skill based Curriculum that encompasses the Foundation Subjects, but interlinks the Core Subjects of English and Maths. Pupils are taught a key skill - it is modeled, practiced and rehearsed. In the second part of the term pupils apply the learnt concept and skills bringing their own ideas, skills and knowledge. The Connected Curriculum promotes positive learning behaviours such as the 4Rs Resilience, Reciprocity, Resourcefulness and Reflectiveness promoting aspects of team work, perseverance with learning challenges, encouraging children to review, reflect and adapt their work in light of changes. It also encourages pupils to use resources around them. The 4Rs are embedded in the Connected Curriculum. For further information see the Key Learning Model Policy.

Phonics

In Phonics, we continue to use Song of Sounds to develop our reading and writing skills.  We are always singing the song and using actions to reinforce learning the graphemes.  The children love to learn new graphemes everyday and use them in their reading and writing consistently.  

A grapheme is a written symbol that represents a sound (phoneme). This can be a single letter, or could be a sequence of letters, such as ai, sh, igh, tch etc. So when a child says the sound /t/ this is a phoneme, but when they write the letter 't' this is a grapheme.

This is the website link for the Song of Sounds video- Stage 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZfjUQ6IEQs&safe=true

Reading

As part of the Ofsted Requirements schools are required to provide details and names of any phonics or reading schemes being used in Key Stage 1. See Phonics section above, for more information on our Phonics Scheme 'The Song of Sounds'.

At Cherry Tree Academy, we acknowledge that evidence shows there is a positive relationship between reading frequency, reading enjoyment and attainment. Children are more likely to be academically successful the more they read. Through the Curriculum we will endeavour to promote pupils’ independent reading through the development of reading skills such as decoding skills and word recognition. We will also build on pupils’ reading interests to engender a love of reading and books to foster positive attitudes. Comprehension activities will also be implemented to ensure pupils have a secure understanding of text such as author’s intent, use of language, inference and deduction skills.

Through the teach of reading, we aim to:

• Ensure that all children have the chance to follow an enriched curriculum by getting them reading early: learning to read = reading to learn!

• Provide children with a range of strategies they can draw upon when decoding text.

• Build on the children’s language experiences and early reading skills

• Encourage the transition from inexperienced readers to independent readers who read a variety of texts for different purposes

• Encourage a high awareness of audience and the ability to adapt their language and style for different purposes/genres and audiences

• Create a genuine love of reading and an appreciation of its value, so that the children choose to read for pleasure and are able to follow personal interests and use their research skills to extend their knowledge and understand of the world around them

• Provide equal opportunities for all children to achieve success when reading.

• Encourage a positive home/school relationship where parents support pupils reading regularly at home and pupils are keen to read.

   

Reading schemes in the school

Throughout KS1 (Key Stage 1), pupils are provided with a range of fiction and non-fiction books which are regularly changed to aid progression with their reading. We use a range of popular and well established schemes including; Oxford Reading Tree, Floppy’s phonics and Big Cat Collins.

As pupils move into KS2 (Key Stage 2), they may continue to access reading schemes such as Ginn and Oxford Reading. However Renaissance Reading (Accelerated Reader) is an online resource used to track pupils understanding of text (comprehension) through pupils taking quizzes. Pupils may be free readers but access books in a particular band.

Strategies - helping our children learn to read

The purpose of a ‘strategy check’ is to give the children an opportunity to practice and remember the different strategies they need to apply in order to read and understand texts. Strategies have been devised into Early Readers, Developing Readers and Active Reading Strategies.
 

Early readers

1:1 pointing:

Children practice pointing using a sentence from a story. Children show and use a pointing finger for each word read.

Picture clues:

What is happening in the pictures ~ could this give us a clue about what the unknown word could be?

Predicting:
Cover a word – predict what it could be and check. Model predicting a word.

Checking initial/final sounds - does it look right?

Cover the first/last letter – predict, then check. Point to the first letter – get your mouth ready to make the sound. Find the letter on an alphabet card/tile.

Applying phonics to words:

List some more challenging words in the text – decode these together using phonics – predict/discuss the meanings.

Checking meaning - does that make sense?

Explain that reading should always make sense. Practice re-reading to check meaning. Read a sentence – check it makes sense. Give the children two options – which one makes sense? Discuss what is happening on the page.

Re-reading to check:
Explain to the children the importance of going back and checking their reading. Model re-reading; practice re-reading.
 

Developing readers

Ask children to name the strategies they can use when they are unable to read a word. Ask the children to share the different things they can do when they do not understand a word, sentence or section of text.

Inferring meaning of unknown words:
List some more challenging words from the guided reading book on a white board or easel. Ask the children to read the words and predict what they mean. Read them the whole sentence so they can check their predictions.

Text layout:

Analyse a page of text (eg non-fiction) how is it organised? Why? How do we read it?

Decoding unknown words: record difficult words from the text on cards or the board. Ask children to decode these words and explain what they did (i.e. syllables, phonics, knowing parts of words...) or predict the meaning of the words.

Checking meaning: read a sentence from the text which is more challenging; discuss what it means and how they know.
 

Active reading strategies:

Asking questions while they are reading:

Visualising: read a section of text – ask children to think about what pictures they see in their head.

Predicting: read the opening paragraph – summarise what they know so far and predict what might happen next – read the next paragraph to check.

Reading longer sentences (complex sentences):

Record the main clause from a complex sentence on the board – read it and discuss what it means – explain that authors often add more information to the sentence (subordinate clause) – add the subordinate clause and discuss how the two clauses relate to each other – locate the comma and explain that the clauses are usually split by a comma.

Identifying the main points: read the opening paragraph of the text to the children and ask them to identify the main points – list these on a board and discuss why other information is not key to the story.

Scanning: turn to a page of text and model how you scan the text for information – use a highlighter.

Skimming: model reading a paragraph quickly, looking for specific information (e.g. main characters; clues about setting).