The
Ferrars AcademyCurriculum
Our children follow a carefully planned, rich and balanced curriculum during their years at the Academy. We have taken a Book centred approach towards our learning with an overarching theme each half term around which we have designed our curriculum.
The curriculum in Early Years centres around the Early Years Development Matters Document and staff meet regularly to plan the children’s learning around half termly topics which centre from the chosen book. They also value the need to allow children’s personal interests and daily situations to lead the learning and can adapt planned sessions as required.
In Key Stage 1 we follow the National Curriculum. We have revised our curriculum to follow a similar format to that in Early Years. Coverage is taught through topics and themes that link to the high quality literacy texts although teaching staff will naturally look for cross curricular links where appropriate to help reinforce the learning and make education more relevant.
All books chosen for our curriculum are rich in colourful language and develop a broad and extensive vocabulary in our pupils. The more variety of language they are exposed to they will then begin to incorporate such words into their own spoken and written language.
We ensure that provision is made for the different starting points from which children develop their learning. The curriculum in the both Early Years and Key Stage 1 allows for children to engage in activities planned by adults and also those that they initiate themselves. Children are encouraged to engage purposefully both indoors and outdoors.
In Both Key stages the staff are focused on developing children’s vocabulary and ensuring they have access to high quality opportunities, experiences and support. Across the academy we see the value in planning for enrichment activities such as visitors to the school coming to speak, visiting workshops, day trips out, outdoor learning, participating in inter/ intra school learning activities and competitions which all help to provide a diverse curriculum, which is broad in learning opportunities and brings learning to life.