Our Curriculum

At De Beauvoir Primary School, we ensure that pupils’ education meets the needs of the new National Curriculum. Our vision is to keep the children’s needs, interests and skills for life at the heart of everything we do. To support our vision, the offer we provide for our pupils is a rich, relevant, broad and balanced curriculum. We actively teach the skills and knowledge children need in order to prepare them for life, as well as the essential attributes of resilience, communication, endurance and enquiry.

EYFS

During the EYFS day, children engage in purposeful play and exploratory activities. Each day is planned to provide a range of experiences and activities that encourage independent thinking and choosing, as well as developing children’s communication and social skills when working alongside peers.

In the Foundation Stage the curriculum is made up of seven areas of learning:

The Prime areas are fundamental and work together, and move through to support development in all other areas.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Communication and Language
Physical Development

The Specific areas include essential skills and knowledge for children to participate successfully in society:

Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the World
Expressive Arts and Design

We aim to increase children’s understanding and encourage them to think and to improve their language competence. We allow children to be creative, to explore and investigate materials, and to be imaginative. Through planned activities, pupils learn important early mathematical, linguistic and scientific concepts. They also acquire social skills through their interaction with others. We actively promote learning to share, to take turns and to care for others. We offer the children a variety of outdoor spaces such as their own playgrounds and the infant playground. We use these outdoor areas as an extension of the classroom, offering children experiences which support their learning in all of the areas.

Key Stage 1 and 2

In Key Stages 1 and 2 the curriculum is made up of core subjects:

Underpinning our curriculum are our core values of respect, confidence, inclusion and tenacity.

Through our knowledge rich curriculum we want pupils at De Beauvoir to be inspired by what has been achieved by those before them and what they can achieve in the future.
We aim to instil a love of learning and to develop pupils’ sense of self.
We want our pupils to understand their place within the world and their impact on it; to broaden pupils’ understanding of their locality and to celebrate its cultural richness.

Within our curriculum, we use half-termly or termly themes for history, geography, art and design and technology. Progression is planned in so that learning builds over time, developing the children’s schema of knowledge.

Within the themes of our curriculum, the following subjects are taught:

English – Where possible, our English units link to our topics so that pupils can focus on their writing skills with the deep body of knowledge they have acquired through their topic.
History – In key stage 2, pupils focus on 4 threads in each unit (culture, empire and economy, belief and governance) and in key stage 1 they focus on the themes more generally.
Geography – Pupils focus on sustainability and developing their understanding of place and locational knowledge.
Art and Design – Pupils focus on key skills of drawing, collage, sculpture, print and paint. Each year children also study art history, focusing on a key art piece and a key artist.
Design and Technology– Through the key skills of designing, making and evaluating, pupils construct various products linked to their themes.

Our ‘hidden curriculum’ provides additional opportunities for pupils to develop the school values, with access to after school clubs, sporting competitions and events, residentials, artists in residence, gardening, in-house operatic performances, theatre trips and other enrichment activities.

Subjects such as maths, Religious Education, cooking, physical education, Spanish, PHSCE and computing are taught separately from the theme itself. Science, where possible, is matched to allow for cross-curricular links to be made to the theme.

If you would like further information about the curriculum at De Beauvoir Primary School, your child’s class teacher, a senior leader or subject leader will be happy to provide further information or responses to any questions you may have.

Our Curriculum

Our Curriculum

EYFS

Key Stage 1 and 2

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