At Blanche Nevile, we provide a broad and balanced curriculum which is interesting, engaging, and provides a range of learning opportunities. We have small class sizes, with a high adult to child ratio. This ensures that lessons are tailored to meet individual needs and that every child receives appropriate levels of support and challenge.
Blanche Nevile Primary follows the Highgate Primary Curriculum (our partner school). This is a topic-based approach to learning that provides a cross-curricular, thematic teaching structure designed to engage children of all abilities.
It comprises a range of units of work, each planned to last for half a term. These units of work, or topics, are designed to provide continuity and progression in children’s learning and for children to learn the essential knowledge, skills and understanding of a broad range of curriculum subjects. Wherever possible, all subjects with the exception of maths, are delivered through the topic.
The school curriculum is all the planned activities and experiences that the school provides in order to promote children’s personal development, growth and learning. It includes not only the formal requirements of the National Curriculum, but also the enrichment programmes, community events and range of extra-curricular activities or experiences that the school organises in order for children to achieve well, develop character and be well prepared for the next stage in their education.
These enrichment experiences include:
- Forest School and Outward Bound Curriculum
- Assemblies
- Performances and Concerts
- Celebrations, Festivals and Themed Days
- Visitors to the school
- School visits and trips
KS 1/2 Intent
At Blanche Nevile, we provide a broad and balanced curriculum which is interesting, engaging, and provides a range of learning opportunities. We have small class sizes, with a high adult to child ratio.
This ensures that lessons are tailored to meet individual needs and that every child receives appropriate levels of support and challenge.
Blanche Nevile Primary follows the Highgate Primary Curriculum (our partner school). This is a topic-based approach to learning that provides a cross-curricular, thematic teaching structure designed to engage children of all abilities.
It comprises a range of units of work, each planned to last for half a term. These units of work, or topics, are designed to provide continuity and progression in children’s learning and for children to learn the essential knowledge, skills and understanding of a broad range of curriculum subjects.
Wherever possible, subjects are delivered through the topic. This enables children to build on their general knowledge and enquiry skills as well as facilitating the development of their communication, literacy and numeracy skills in a range of cross curricula contexts. Subjects such as Maths, Computing, Science, PSHE, PE, RE are taught discretely allowing for skills development.
The school curriculum is all the planned activities and experiences that the school provides in order to promote children’s personal development, growth and learning.
It includes not only the formal requirements of the National Curriculum, but also the enrichment programmes, community events and range of extra-curricular activities or experiences that the school organises in order for children to achieve well, develop character and be well prepared for the next stage in their education.
These enrichment experiences include:
Forest School and Outward Bound Curriculum
Assemblies
Performances and Concerts
Celebrations, Festivals and Themed Days
Visitors to the school
School visits and trips
In addition to this, as a school for deaf children, we have a strong focus on supporting our pupils to develop a strong deaf identity so they have positive self-esteem and become confident learners as young deaf people.
KS1/2 Implementation
Our pupils develop and grow through learning in a fun and stimulating environment. The holistic approach at Blanche Nevile looks at the whole child, establishing language and communication as well as their deaf identity.
Social and independence skills are developed and peer groups allow pupils to form lasting friendships.
Our young people are based in small groups and taught by Qualified Teachers of Deaf Children and Young People with the support of Communication Support Workers and Learning Support Assistants. The Curriculum is adapted to suit individual needs.
We recognise that our children learn in different ways, and we therefore plan and deliver the curriculum in a multi-sensory, adapted approach to engage all learners using a range of visual, kinaesthetic and auditory (where appropriate) resources and stimuli to maximise their learning.
The curriculum is delivered in bilingually in both BSL and English by staff who are fluent in both BSL and English and this is unique to the school. All pupils have full access to information in BSL as their first language and use this to develop their knowledge and understanding of English as a second language.
Pupils have daily guided reading with staff to ensure they have opportunities to constantly develop their reading skills, and develop their skills in translating from English to BSL.
We use the following Phonics and Reading Schemes:
Floppy’s Phonics through the use of Visual Phonics
Big Cat Collins Reading Scheme
Our school’s bilingual practice in British Sign Language (BSL) and English is central to our curriculum and is the defining characteristic in our philosophy and policy on teaching and learning. The curriculum is designed to enable to enable all our pupils to learn in a fun, meaningful and engaging way and make progress to achieve their full potential. We value BSL and English equally, recognising that for the majority of our children BSL is their preferred and dominant language, which enables them to access the curriculum to maximise their academic, social, emotional, and physical development. We recognise the need to be flexible in our language approaches for pupils with emerging and developing English as a second language, as well as those pupils with additional needs. We aim for all our pupils to become bilingual and achieve fluency in both BSL and English to become successful, lifelong, independent learners in an increasingly global society.
We pride ourselves on providing a learning environment that is safe, caring, supportive and stimulating so that pupils feel challenged, motivated and have high aspirations for the future. The curriculum and learning environment is designed to build positive self-esteem in our children. We use a wide range of resources to suit different learning styles and foster active learning through whole class teaching, small group work, and one-to-one teaching, collaborative work and independent learning activities.
Staff have high expectations of pupils’ achievements, and are always challenged to do better. Learning intentions and outcomes from the curriculum and expectations are matched to individual pupils’ needs to ensure they make progress that is commensurate with their own learning and development potential.
KS1/2 Impact
Staff provide effective and immediate feedback throughout lessons to check, consolidate and progress learning. This is achieved through the high staff to pupil ratios within classes and promotes positive and relevant discussion between staff and pupils regarding their work, this immediate feedback is an effective tool in supporting progress and impact.
End of key stage assessments are completed at the end of EYFS against the Early Learning Goals and at the end of KS1 and KS2 against the expected standards, or pre-key stage standards. These may be Teacher Assessments or the Standardised Attainment Tests (SATS) in KS1 and 2.
We monitor the impact of our whole school curriculum in a range of ways.
Observations
Learning walks
Book/work scrutiny
Teacher/Support Staff meetings
Assessment Data
Moderation both internal and external
Reporting to parents/carers
External Monitoring visits by School Improvement Partners
Monitoring by Governors
Leadership Team development work on SEP/SIP
EHCP Reviews
Pupil Voice
Parent/Carer voice
Staff voice
Multi professional meetings
Pupil progression
Moderation
The impact of our curriculum offer is evident through pupil’s enjoyment for learning.
Pupils are prepared for the next stage in their educational journey and effectively transition into Year 7.
We use the following Phonics and Reading Schemes:
Floppy’s Phonics through the use of Visual Phonics
Big Cat Collins Reading Scheme
Please click on the links below for more information and do contact us if you would like to know more about our curriculum.
Year 1 Curriculum Map 2023-2024
Year 2 Curriculum Map 2023-2024
Year 4 and 5 Curriculum Map 2023-2024
Year 6 Curriculum Map 2023-2024
Primary Music Curriculum 2022-2023
