Small school, Big ambitions
Phonics and spelling sessions will take place daily. Children will be grouped according to phonics stage and will remain within bubbles where possible. Reception and Y1 will deliver an additional daily phonics session in the afternoon.
Phonics assessments will be used by adults leading the groups to teach the gaps in pupils’ phonic knowledge.
In addition to this, pupils will be PM Benchmarked within the first 2 weeks of return so that challenging and enjoyable reading books can be sent home. This will encourage a love of learning and will also enable the positive home-school relationship to resume.
100% of Y2 pupils passed the Y1 phonics screening assessment in December 2020.
Our school follows the White Rose Maths scheme. This has enabled us to continue to follow the scheme during lockdown using teaching videos and worksheets. The robust and comprehensive nature of the scheme will allow class teachers to quickly and easily access resources from previous year groups if this is required. Teachers will use in class assessments such as whiteboard work, small group work and marking after a lesson to inform their planning and preparation to meet the children’s needs. Our school is being flexible with our approach to maths teaching and teachers can and will adapt lessons to meet the individual needs of children. Additional reasoning and problem-solving activities are being set on Seesaw as maths weekly homework as this is an area which staff have identified as an area where children have had little practice during lockdown
Bradfield Dungworth’s approach to spelling punctuation and grammar have ensured that each year group have been taught all grammar and punctuation objectives in the autumn term 2019. Therefore, all pupils were taught all the relevant GPS content for last year but will have had less time to consolidate and practise their learning. Retention and understanding of grammatical knowledge will be assessed through ongoing formative assessment and any gaps identified will be retaught and revisited by the class teacher through quality first teaching. The small nature of our school and our mixed age classes enable us to quickly and easily reteach any concepts from previous year groups if needed.
Independent writing assessments will be conducted by all class teachers before Easter. This will give teachers an accurate reflection on what children can achieve independently and where they need support. Teachers will use this to plan for and address any gaps within their written English learning during the summer term.
There will be a heavy focus on handwriting in March to ensure that pupils get back to using the neat cursive style of the school and that they are forming joins correctly. Targeted handwriting sessions will be taught at least 3 times a week from Y1 to Y6
Our time in lockdown has enabled subject leaders to reflect upon and refine their subjects. In the academic year 2020-2021 new, exciting and robust schemes of work have been introduced in the following subjects:
These new schemes develop our curriculum ensuring that children have access to a rich and vibrant curriculum which ensures that children leave our school with a deep understanding of subject knowledge and skills in these curriculum areas.
Our school is in the lucky position to have a curriculum that is focussed around History, Geography and Science skills whilst being linked to high-quality literacy texts. Our curriculum approach has ensured that children have been given an opportunity to apply their geographical, historical and scientific skills in the autumn and spring terms. Teachers use ongoing formative assessment to assess children’s understanding and skills and to address any gaps or misconceptions through wave 1 quality first teaching. Subject Leaders will identify any objectives that need to be revisited and plan for these to be addressed in future topics.