The School Curriculum
Curriculum Statement of Intent:
At Gosberton Academy the curriculum is designed to: deliver first-hand learning experiences that help to motivate and stimulate learners as well as offering challenges. Learning will be meaningful, involving life experiences and being ably supported within the correct context to engage pupils allowing them to show their ability as creative critical thinkers.
Gosberton Academy’s curriculum aims to deliver a 21st Century education, equipping our pupils with the skills that are required to be an independent, resilient and aspirational citizen. The curriculum recognises the importance of all stakeholders and their views will be sought regularly to ensure a clear understanding of the aims of the curriculum as well as identifying the successes of the curriculum. Community involvement is an essential part of our curriculum as we celebrate local traditions, support and engage with local businesses as well as learning skills to enable the children to take an active role in events throughout their time at Gosberton Academy, showing their understanding and commitment to the community where they are educated. The pupils of Gosberton Academy will be nurtured, supported, guided and inspired by all staff, parents and other stakeholders to encourage them to be aspirational and excited about their future, yet not forgetting that school-life is to be a happy, investigative and an enquiring time where children should be thirsty for new knowledge. skills and experiences.
As a result of the broad and balanced curriculum, pupils will leave the Academy with a sense of belonging to a tightly knit community where they have the confidence, resilience, knowledge and skills to make decisions and connections to become life-long learners.
Curriculum Implementation
Gosberton Academy staff are prepared to use all learning styles using a variety of resources, activities and tasks. They will use the Early Outcomes and National Curriculum guidance to ensure that all children are given the appropriate opportunities throughout the whole curriculum. At Gosberton Academy, staff expect all pupils to reach or exceed national expectations. There are also high expectations of the progress that pupils make, whether that be pupils working above, at or below and pupils identified as having Special Educational Needs. Teachers are responsible for ensuring support is in place for all pupils who are in danger of not maintaining the levels required to
make at least expected progress.
In order to ensure that pupils can commit knowledge concepts and skills to long term memory, we have core vertical themes which are taught within each foundation subject area as outlined below.
From EYFS to Year 6, writing does have a key focus and is built on each year to ensure there is progression throughout each academic year.
From starting with ensuring a correct pencil grip and writing style through the use of lots of fine-motor activities, the children begin to develop a love and excitement of writing. The children are taught about a range of different writing text types and genres and allowed opportunities to see well-written examples and have the opportunity to write their own. At Gosberton Academy, the children will always be writing with a purpose, trying to help them relate their writing to a real-life context and give it a purpose to ensure the children remain engaged and excited with their opportunities for writing.
At Gosberton Academy, writing is taught through units of work where each unit focuses on one particular text type. Throughout each unit, the children will look at features of that particular text type, well-written examples and technical vocabulary before planning and writing their own versions. After the children have written, there is a large focus on editing their work. Editing is an expectation of all children at Gosberton Academy and this can be done so in a variety of ways.
Arithmetic and Mental Fluency
At Gosberton Academy, there is an emphasis on ensuring that the children have a good subject knowledge of the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) and that the children can work mentally throughout their time at Gosberton Academy. Each strand of Maths will start with ensuring a clear arithmetic understanding, before moving on to reasoning and problem solving.
Reasoning and Problem Solving
The use of reasoning and problem solving is interwoven through all of the learning within Maths. Each Maths lesson will have an element of reasoning and/or problem solving to allow children to learn as well as showing their deeper understanding of that given strand of Maths. At Gosberton Academy, we believe it is important to ensure that our children have the opportunity to challenge themselves and prove their higher-level thinking through a range of problem solving and reasoning activities.
Times Tables
From the summer of 2020, the multiplication check will be compulsory for all year 4 children. As a result, the staff at Gosberton Academy are dedicated to ensuring the best possible opportunities for learning all their times tables before the end of Year 4. To accompany that, all children at Gosberton Academy are signed up to Times Table Rockstars – an online resource that can be used on computers, tablets or phones to help improve their times table knowledge.
Gosberton Academy also have a Times Table Challenge where the children can achieve a certificate, bronze badge, silver badge, gold badge and a medal. Each week, the children are tested at one of the relevant levels of the Times Table Challenge and rewarded in the Friday assembly.
Reading is a crucial part of everyone’s life and this is no different at Gosberton Academy. We believe that learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at our school. Reading is something that is used throughout all subjects and all learning links back to reading.
To further support your children, it is expected that children will be encouraged to develop good reading habits at home. Every child should be engaged with reading every evening. This includes independent reading, or sharing a book/story with parents. Every time a child reads at home, we ask parents to sign in their child’s reading record. The Reading Challenge is in place at Gosberton Academy and the children are aiming for a certificate and a badge each term. There is an added competitiveness as each term, the top 3 in the Reading Challenge achieve a bronze, silver or gold badge.
To show the importance we place on Reading, the year 6 children run a daily lunch club in the school library where children from other classes are able to come and read, be read to, or share the year 6 children’s love and energy of reading.
For Phonics information, please see our Phonics Portfolio below.
Spelling
From Year 2 to Year 6, the children at Gosberton Academy have spelling sessions daily. Spelling sessions are a resource that allows the children the opportunity to learn a range of different spelling patterns in each year group. Spellings are set weekly and learnt at home.
The teachers use a range of different strategies throughout the spelling sessions to ensure the children can learn the new spelling rules and continue to be engaged in their learning – new spelling patterns are then expected to be seen in the children’s work throughout the rest of the curriculum.
Grammar
At Gosberton Academy, the children are taught grammar and punctuation through Literacy lessons. For the main part, the start of each lesson is based around grammar as well as being used throughout the whole Literacy lesson. However, at times, discrete SPAG (spelling punctuation and grammar) lessons are required to ensure a clear understanding as been obtained.
It is important that the children at Gosberton Academy are able to identify key SPAG features within a text as well as being able to then go on and implement these features within their own writing.
School Trips
At Gosberton Academy, the children access a range of different school trips. We aim to ensure that all children have two school trips each academic year. However, this is something that can vary depending on availabilities during each theme of learning. The trips are subsidised by school and the school’s PTFA to help support parents with the voluntary contributions that are asked for.
School Experiences
As well as attending school trips, the staff at Gosberton Academy organise experiences within the school building. These are arranged to help support children’s learning throughout the year. In the past, the children of Gosberton Academy have been able to access pantomime visits, escape room style experiences and Multi-Faith days at school. These will continue to take place at Gosberton Academy as the excitement and engagement that the children have for these has been seen to have an unbelievable impact on children’s engagement with their learning.
Breakfast Club
There is a daily breakfast club that runs from 8am until the start of the school day. There is an offer of cereal, toast and/or juice and water. The cost of the breakfast club is £2 per day and children must be pre-booked into the breakfast club through parent pay.
After-School Childcare Club
There is a daily after-school childcare club that runs from the end of the school day to 5:30pm. The club is designed to support our families with childcare. At the after-school childcare club, children will be able to take part in physical activities, make use of the outdoor areas, work together with children from the same and different classes as well as have an enjoyable time interacting with staff. During the club, snacks will be available for children.
After-School Activities
There is a range of after-school activities on offer at Gosberton Academy. The Academy work closely with Elite Sports, who deliver sports clubs daily. These clubs are changed each term to ensure a range of sporting opportunities are on offer for each child. Some examples of Elite Sports’ clubs are: basketball, striking and fielding, gymnastics and boxercise.
As well as sports clubs, the staff at Gosberton Academy run clubs each night of the week, allowing the children the opportunities to attend a range of different clubs, working with children from different year groups. Some examples of the clubs run by staff are: Film, computing, arts and crafts and board games
Sport
Gosberton Academy is part of the Boston School Sports Partnership and this has allowed the children many different opportunities within sport. The children are able to attend developmental sessions in a range of sports, receive in-school training and support from specialists as well as competing in school competitions against local schools.
Music
Through the support of the Lincolnshire Music Service, the children are able to access a range of high-quality Music. This could involve joining their extra-curricular groups and activities. The school attend the national Young Voices concert and Trust-wide Music Festival – a celebration of Music that has been taught throughout each academic year. Some children at Gosberton Academy have gone on to continue their musical learning by attending BYJO (Boston Youth Jazz Orchestra) or Boston’s Mash-Up Band.
