Our Curriculum at William Rhodes

How our curriculum is developed.

We know that children learn best when they are excited and enthused about their learning. This is why we try to teach through topic, make links between subjects and give children as much real life experience as we can.  

In the mornings we tend to do most of our English and maths work. In the Infants we teach the children how to read using a systematic phonics approach (based on Read, Write inc. and Letters & Sounds) and by using a reading scheme (Oxford Reading Tree)  and real books to encourage their love of reading. In Year 1 and Year 2 they have class readers appropriate to their age e.g. Year 1 'Dogger' by Shirley Hughes and in Year 2 'George's Marvellous Medicine' by Roald Dahl. In the Junior department we draw all our English work from a class reader which is always a high quality text such as 'The Iron Man' by Ted Hughes or 'Kensuke's Kingdom' by Michael Morpurgo.

To see the National Curriculum reading objectives year by year, please click here.

 We fire children's imaginative ideas for writing by giving them reasons to write. It might be because they are inspired by an amazing photograph or that they want to write in the style of an author they've been reading. It could be because they want to write and tell the headteacher something such as 'How we could make school dinners better' or that they want to write a story for the younger children to read. Teachers model excellent writing and that way, children see exactly what they are aiming for.  

To see National Curriculum writing objectives year by year, click here

 For maths, we follow the National Curriculum really focusing on developing children's fluency with number (number bonds and times tables) and their mastery of the four operations (add, subtract, multiply & divide). We teach number work every morning and the more practical elements of geometry, statistics and measure are taught in the afternoons. We use Rising Stars text books and online learning to support our teaching. 

To see the progression year by year in the maths National Curriculum, click here

The Foundation Subjects

Every afternoon we teach the foundation subjects and make our topics exciting, engaging and appealing to the children. Where possible, we always squeeze in a visit to support the children's learning.

Year 1 & Year 2 Foundation Subjects

Year 1 & Year 2 plan together for the foundation subjects. This way we can get visitors into school and get out and about as often as possible to help make the learning as real and as engaging as possible.

In science the children are learning about materials, animals (including humans) and plants.

In history, they are learning about the Great Fire of London, Florence Nightingale and visiting Bishop's House in Sheffield to see how the Tudors lived. The children love it when the History Van visits William Rhodes and they get the chance to dress up and really experience what it feels like to live in past times.

For design & technology, the children will be thinking about buildings and the materials used to make them and to look at different structures.

In art, they'll be mixing colours and looking at the work of famous artists and sculptors.

They'll learn how to do simple programming using BeeBot and Purple Mash and learn how to explore the internet.

Music is all about experimenting with different percussion instruments. 

The children will also enjoy getting out and about for geography fieldwork where they learn about contrasting localities and the origins of the food they eat.

On special days we collapse the curriculum and teach a whole day on a special theme such as Divali or Buddhism. We have diversity days where we learn about wider society. We're also learning about British values and have really enjoyed having a mock trial or making a new town to help us understand the rule of law.