Our Curriculum
At Oyster Park Primary Academy, our core Trust values of ‘care, aspire and succeed’ are at the heart of everything we do. We set high expectations, inspiring every pupil to excel during their time with us and to develop the skills, knowledge, resilience and passion they require to become life-long learners.
Our intention is to provide a curriculum that enables all pupils to be the best they can be and have successful lives. Our curriculum principles are rooted in the research and pedagogy of Sir Ken Robinson’s creative schools ‘The 4 E’s’. We aim to deliver a balanced, rigorous and coherent curriculum that engages all pupils by inspiring and developing their enthusiasm for learning, that enables all pupils to learn through engagement and curiosity. Has high expectations of what our pupils can achieve and empowers our pupils to be successful in a safe space where they can take risks and feel supported.
Our curriculum is experiential reflecting the context of our community. We aim wherever possible to provide pupils with experiences to support them in developing their knowledge and understanding. Our intention is to ensure that all pupils make outstanding progress and that the curriculum removes any potential barriers to learning, delivering a bespoke offer that meets the needs of our community. We want our pupils to leave with knowledge which will not only create excellent life opportunities but will also prepare them for life beyond our academy.
We view the design of our curriculum as an evolving and fluid process, always being evaluated and improved, which takes into consideration:
• the needs and character of our pupils;
• pupils prior learning and experiences;
• the National Curriculum;
• and educational research which is evaluated and relevant to our academy.
We have designed a curriculum which focuses on embedding key substantive and disciplinary knowledge in each subject area so that our pupils know more, remember more and understand more. Learning is sequenced in such a way that children are provided with opportunities to recall and retrieve previous learning so that knowledge is cemented over time in their long-term memory. We also enrich our curriculum with wider opportunities, in order to build the cultural capital that our pupils need in order to become successful and well-educated citizens.
We implement our curriculum through pedagogical approaches utilising our 10 teaching and learning principles which are based on the research of Rosenshine and underpin the continued development of how our curriculum is delivered through high quality teaching and learning.
In this section you will find details of the programmes of study and curriculum content for each subject across each year group.
In EYFS and Key Stage 1 the school uses Read Write Inc to support the teaching of phonics and reading. For useful information for parents on the phonics programme and how to support your child, please click here.
At Oyster Park we follow the Read to Write text-based approach to the teaching and learning of writing. Read to Write is an evidence-based high-quality teaching of writing through high-quality comprehensive literature units that have been carefully constructed so the entire statutory curriculum for English is covered from EYFS to Y6. These detailed units of work focus on engaging, vocabulary-rich texts, with a wealth of writing opportunities within and across the curriculum.
We believe good handwriting is an important skill for children to develop. For details of how we teach handwriting throughout the school and how you can support your child with this, please click here
The teaching of Mathematics at Oyster Park Primary Academy is based on the three key aims of the National Curriculum: fluency, reasoning and problem solving. As a school, we follow the White Rose Maths Hub scheme of work. We aim to provide children with the ability to reason in a logical way, to recall known facts quickly and confidently so they are fluent in basic skills and to apply mathematics through problem solving in real life contexts and deeper challenges showing mastery of strands. We want to help children to see the links between maths and other subjects and deepen their understanding through investigations and applications of maths across the curriculum.
At Oyster Park, we encourage the use of concrete objects to aid pupil understanding and incorporate them into our teaching where possible.
For details of how we teach Mathematics throughout the school and how you can support your child with this, please click here to read our calculation policy.
The calculation policy explains the approaches that we have to teaching addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and it shows how the methods change as children progress through the school. We hope you find this document useful in understanding how we teach children to carry out calculations.
For more information about the curriculum at Oyster Park Primary Academy please contact Mrs Bobycombe on the main school number, or email opoffice@oppa.castlefordtrust.co.uk.