Curriculum Overview

Our curriculum goes further, encompassing the core values of Middleton Primary School.

Thrive

We want all children to recognise and achieve their own potential. We believe that all children should have equality of opportunity to thrive. We want our children to be healthy in mind and body. We want to feed imagination and creativity. In our school we have a holistic approach to nurturing the whole family. Children have the opportunity to participate in a range of stimulating and relevant visits and visitors. Our passionate, excited teachers not only deliver outstanding lessons, but go the extra mile to provide

opportunities for extra-curricular activities and learning, such as Sports Clubs, Gardening, Cooking, Mathletics and Art Clubs. We encourage our children to celebrate their own and their peers’ successes on learning and achievements through assemblies and visits to The Hive. Our flexible, creative curriculum allows for multi-sensory outdoor learning, including Forest Schools and outdoor lessons in our extensive on-site provision. Our Breakfast Club, with our Pastoral Team present, not only provides breakfast but is a point of contact for our families. Through our strong and embracing parental links, we allow our children and families to thrive.

Opportunity

Our children believe that they have the capacity to achieve, improve and find solutions. We give opportunities to develop skills for lifelong learning through a flexible, creative curriculum, which provides links for learning.

We achieve this through an embedded Talk Matters Strategy, which allows children to communicate and co-operate effectively. Children are expected to actively participate in school life through opportunities for discussion with partners, groups and the whole class.

Opportunities to participate are provided across the curriculum, resulting in a growth mindset for all children, allowing them to recognise, value and grow from their mistakes – taking them into the Learning Pit! We provide opportunities for our parents to engage in their child’s education – we have half termly events to which parents are invited into school – to observe lessons, e.g. Read, Write Inc, Numicon, Cooking, Aspirations morning, etc.

Grow

We believe in growing hearts and minds. We want our children to be emotionally intelligent. To accelerate learning, children need to be multi-sensory and the outdoor environment is perfect to develop these senses by placing emphasis on Outdoor Learning and Forest School. We want our pupils to grow in confidence and become self-assured learners and to promote a deeper understanding of the world around them. As a pre-condition to success we encourage each pupil to develop an understanding and appreciation of the environment and the effect, both positive and negative, that humankind has upon it.

We can achieve this by providing opportunities to learn outside. We have Forest School sessions for Reception children and Year 2 children. We have a weekly extra-curricular Gardening Club and gardening sessions in school time, where small groups of children are taken out to do activities. Teachers plan to take their children out fortnightly so they can learn outside – this could be a literacy lesson, maths lesson or sometimes just reading to children outside. We grow a variety of fruit and vegetables – children harvest these and they are cooked in our kitchen or in their own cooking sessions as all children are given the opportunity to cook every half term. We also have chickens who wander around on our back field – children from different classes feed them every day with left over dinners from lunchtime!

Enjoy

We want our children to relish the opportunity to learn. To do this, we encourage our children to become inquisitive and articulate learners. This in turn, enables ownership of their experiences and goals. This is underpinned by the Talk Matters principles (which is part of our curriculum). The greater their enjoyment, the greater their minds and confidence will grow, preparing them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences for life-long learning.

We can achieve this through our broad and balanced curriculum, our planned visits and visitors, our environment in school and our Theme Days and Weeks mean we plan activities that children will enjoy. We place great emphasis on Attendance and Punctuality – children want to come to school – they enjoy what they experience here – they are proud of their punctuality and attendance.

Truthful

We encourage all children to foster a truthful mindset. We believe each child has the right to be heard and we support this by placing a great emphasis on growing their confidence and respect for themselves, others and the environment. Through exposure to a variety of enriched diverse opportunities, children learn about Human Values and different cultures. Through our school networks we provide a transparent ethos, where parents, children and the community are able to access guidance within a moral framework. Children have honest role models and are always encouraged to make informed and appropriate choices. Truth Talk is an intrinsic part or school life and we adopt a restorative approach to problem solving.

Healthy

We take a holistic approach to the development of healthy bodies, minds and well-being. Children are encouraged to make age appropriate choices in relation to diet and physical activity. We provide four healthy school meal options every day, as well as teaching children to grow and prepare food. Through specialist PE teaching and external coaches our children are given the opportunity to develop life skills and the chance to discover their talents, which are cultivated through our ‘Healthy Me’ Jigsaw theme. The importance of a healthy mind is nurtured through the development of children’s self-worth, self-respect, confidence, resilience and determination, which is embedded into our school ethos. Our Meat Free and Dairy Free Monday raises awareness in children about the meat and dairy industries.

Excel

We provide opportunities to allow children to become educated citizens, in order to excel on their journey through life. We want our children to excel in all subjects, we develop outstanding fluency of language through a diverse curriculum, classroom and school environment. We inspire creativity so children can build systematically on current knowledge, making links between what is known and new learning. We look to develop well-rounded citizens who can effectively communicate with others. We believe that each child should be empowered to build a better future through a relevant and purposeful curriculum. We will stimulate intellectual curiosity about our world through a diverse curriculum. The use of challenge, resilience to failure and enquiry to awaken their love of learning and perseverance and excel in life.

We achieve this by using a variety of resources and strategies – Mastery Documents, Talk Matters, Talk 4 Writing, Alan Peat Sentences, Displays and Vibrant Lessons.

Respectful

Our curriculum promotes spiritual, mental, cultural, moral and physical development of our pupils in order to be respectful now and in later life. We develop emotional intelligence, self-awareness and the ability to self-regulate, allowing our children to respect themselves and others. We believe our children engage with the multi-cultural world we live in respectfully and, as a school, we challenge prejudice and discriminatory behaviour. We will nurture children’s empathy for different view-points to allow them to be critical thinkers and foster acceptance, consideration and equality for all. This will cultivate love and life-long happiness.

We achieve this through our PSHE Curriculum, Thank You Assemblies, Positive Rewards, Positive Behaviour Management Strategies, Focus Days/Weeks – International Week, Black History Week, Anti-Bullying Week, Safety Week, LGBT+ week, Human Values and Humanities.

Middleton Primary School is committed to embracing diversity, and holds an LGBTQ+ week every year.

We held our last LGBTQ+ week in school during the week commencing 15th February 2019. This is funded by the Government Equalities Office and supported by the Department of Education. We have lots of posters about this around school. Barnardo’s deliver training and work with schools – they have worked with all staff in school (and other schools across Leeds and the country) to raise their awareness around LGBTQ+. Each year group will focus on a particular aspect of diversity and parents/carers will be invited in to our assemblies to see what we have been learning.

We Are a Healthy School

We are a Healthy School and will be going for validation for this. This means we want children to eat healthily and be fit - the policies listed on this page help us to achieve this! Watch this space for further information.

We focus on 4 key areas – PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Emotional, including SRE – Sex Relationship Education), Physical Activity, Healthy Eating and SEMH (Social, Emotional, Mental Health).  We support children in all four aspects – we have a PSHE programme in school (Jigsaw and PSHE and Me) and we promote physical activity through PE lessons, competitions and other things, like the Daily Mile. We provide children with opportunities to cook at least once a half term.

We have shared our Packed Lunch Policy and our school dinners meet the 2015 Food Standard. We celebrate ‘excellent’ examples of packed lunches – we give a £5 Asda voucher to these!  We have Place 2 Be in school, which supports children and families with SEMH needs and use outside providers to support with this also. We have our team of five Pastoral Officers, who also support children and families and we make referral to Cluster for further support.