Curriculum
Our curriculum has been designed to ensure comprehensive coverage of the National Curriulum. In fact, due to our careful sequencing we are able to exceed these expectations in each of our subjects. We use the National Curriculum as a starting point rather than a limit to what we cover in each subject. We have worked with our partner schools across the Federation, and our central team of subject experts, to build our own curriculum. We build on the work of external experts for our phonics, reading and mathematics teaching. All other subjects are taught using our in house plans and progression. Each subject is taught discretely and weekly to support children in remembering the key knoweldge and skills they need to fulfil our intent.
Reading is at the heart of everything we do at Orpington, as we recognise that excellent reading skills unlock the possibiities of the rest of the curriculum for our children. We have a specialist PE teacher who supports our pupils in a wide range of sporting activiteis and competitions across the acadmic year. This is an example of how we exceed expectations across the curriculum.
We have a mastery mindset for every subject- meaning we have the same high expectations for every child- scaffolding and supporting the least able to enable them to meet each objective. For us, mastery means that children are able to articulate their learning, make links between knowledge they have learnt in different subjects and remember the key knowledge and skills required to be a master in each subject. At HPAO mastery also means deepening children's knowledge and understanding rather than accelerating them through the curriculum. For example, our most able mathematicians won't ever move on to the maths that is expected of the next year group, instead they will develop a deeper understanding of the current year groups objectives. This is a decision we have made as we approach our curriculum as a narrative model. The analogy we use is this - you can't understand chapter 5 of a book if you haven't already read chapters 1 - 4. As such, the deeper the understanding of Year 4 maths objectives we can give our children, the better prepared they will be for the demands of the Year 5 maths objectives. We apply this model to every subject in the curriculum.
We have developed a range of strategies that we use across all of our curriculum subejcts that help us to ensure that chidren know more and remember more as they move through our curriculum.
We look forward to offering you the opportunity to talk to our children about their learning when you come to visit us on an open morning.
SMSC and British values are thread throughout our curriculum so that they become an integral part of our curriuculum planning and implementation.
An important part of our school day is our collective worship. We have daily assemblies, with each day focusing on a different aspect of school life. On Mondays we learn about local, national and global events that are relevant to our lives. On Tuesdays we use Picture News to debate a topical issue, on Wednesdays we have assembly in class. On Thursday we sing together and on Friday we celebrate all the wonderful things we have acheived in school that week.
