“Work, Learn, Achieve Together”

Hebburn Lakes Primary is a happy, successful and supportive school where Everyone Cares and Everyone Matters. We take pride in our children learning in a positive, safe and welcoming environment, and through the delivery of a rich and varied curriculum are aiming to achieve the best possible outcomes.

Curriculum Rationale                   

Learning and achievement drives everything that we do at Hebburn Lakes Primary School. Our role, in partnership with parents, is to build the foundations for a successful education, to enable each child to discover the joy of learning, to help them to fulfill every aspect of their potential and to encourage their growth into effective citizens, ready to play their part in the world and their community. We are a school that champions inclusivity, meaning at the heart of our ethos is a commitment to providing all children with the education they need to serve them throughout their lives.

Underpinning this work are our core aims to:

Work Together by setting the highest expectations and levels of respect for each other

Learn Together by having the courage and confidence to take risks and

Achieve Together through aspiring to be the best we can be throughout our journey to become independent lifelong learners.

We want all of our children to experience success and enjoy their learning to the full and aim to achieve this through high standards of teaching and learning within a happy, structured and caring environment.

Curriculum Intent

While following the National Curriculum, we ensure our children enjoy their learning by giving them, where appropriate, the opportunity to be immersed in meaningful integrated units of work. Aiming to increase learner’s motivation, enthusiasm and engagement in their learning.

At Hebburn Lakes Primary School we have designed and implemented a curriculum that is both immersive and progressive. We use a carefully planned model, with both breadth and depth, that is highly relevant and purposeful, exciting for both staff and pupils and that truly broadens pupils’ outlook and views by promoting global dimensions, as well as raising aspirations.

We aim to offer challenging and inspiring learning opportunities, highlighting human creativity and achievement. We strive to help our pupils realise the full potential they have to achieve and succeed, not just at school, but as educated citizens within their own community and on a wider global scale. We want the pupils’ learning to be more ‘outward-facing’, enabling them to become well-rounded and happy individuals who not only care about themselves, but about others and the environment.

Our intention is to ensure our curriculum extends opportunities, raises aspirations, and opens children’s eyes to the world beyond their immediate environment, enabling our children to live happy, healthy and productive lives and inspires them to achieve more.

We believe our families are key partners in developing their children’s knowledge and as a school we need to be proactive in our approach to support our parents to support their child’s learning and development. We have therefore developed a curriculum that takes full advantage of the school environment and range of resources available to us, whilst focussing on ensuring we develop our school as a learning community.

Reading is given high priority across our curriculum as we believe it is the ability to read and understand which opens up learning for children, alongside this is a clear focus on the development of children’s vocabulary as a vital tool in learning and understanding the full curriculum. We ensure the children have the opportunity to read for pleasure on a daily basis. In maths we are developing a mastery approach where all pupils are taught to their year group expectation with challenge for the more able and support for those who need it. On entry to school our Nursery and Reception children follow the Early Years Curriculum and develop their knowledge, skills and understanding through a combination of both play-based learning and more focussed teacher led sessions. Pupils learn to share, work independently and play with others.

At Hebburn Lakes we are keen to promote the diversity of life, to celebrate difference and promote respect for all. Through our teaching, learning and behaviour expectations, we give pupils the knowledge and understanding of how discrimination and  behaviour which may show prejudice is dealt with, including the prevention of bullying. Pupils with special educational needs are well-supported in school with extra support and/or resources deployed where necessary to help overcome the barriers to their learning. Assessment is used to identify children’s progress and find out areas where they are less confident. These assessments inform teacher’s lesson planning. We believe our curriculum prepares our children well for their secondary education and has inspired them to find out about the world around them.

 Implementation

We want our curriculum to be centred around our focus of ‘Everyone Cares, Everyone Matters’.

We use Dimensions ‘Learning Means the World’ Curriculum as the vehicle for this, with a view to changing our pupils’ hearts, as well as their minds.

This curriculum is underpinned by four highly relevant world issues, known as the four Cs:-

Culture

Communication

Conflict

Conservation

 Communication

We believe that language is the key to learning. We want our pupils to develop excellent communication skills, using all forms of expression. We believe these skills are necessary tools in order to, not only fully access the broader curriculum, but to succeed in later life. We want our pupils to become confident communicators, using different methods effectively and appropriately.

Our curriculum provides lots of opportunities for pupils to develop their language and broaden their vocabulary in a progressive, structured way, thus enabling them to articulate their learning, express their thinking and opinions clearly in discussion, as well as enabling collaboration and exchange of ideas.

Culture

As a school that predominantly represents a White British demographic, with little personal experience of other groups, we want our pupils to fully appreciate and embrace cultural diversity, learning about and experiencing a range of different cultural and faith heritages.

We want them to value diversity, understand the roots and importance of cultural heritage and to behave in a respectful and tolerant way towards others, regardless of faith, ethnicity or background. We actively and explicitly promote cross-cultural friendship, respect, understanding and tolerance through ‘Learning Means the World’.

 Conflict

We believe that having a developed understanding of causes and consequences of conflict will make a positive difference to our pupils’ choices, as they learn more about self-management, resilience and conflict resolution. We want our pupils to be able to learn how to address conflict, realising how important positive relationships are in their immediate and wider community. We also want them to be able to put into action conflict resolution and modify their own behaviour to help them disagree in a constructive manner.

Conservation

Our pupils are already invested in helping to make the world a better place. We feel we can help them develop a much deeper knowledge of this through a curriculum that makes sustainability central. ‘Learning Means the World’ employs a structured approach to developing environmental awareness and appreciation, not just at local, but also national and global levels. We want our pupils to be much more active and involved in conservation issues at, not only a local level e.g. beach

clean-up, but also with an awareness of the global impact. We want them to care passionately about our world and to engage actively as good stewards for change, both now and in the future.

Sitting alongside this are our 4 pathways which support the children to acquire the knowledge, skills and positive attitudes needed to access and make links across the curriculum

At Hebburn Lakes our aim is for:

  • teachers to demonstrate secure subject knowledge across all subjects
  • teachers to make effective use of assessment information to check knowledge and move learning on
  • teachers to plan a good level of stretch and challenge to extend the learning of all pupils and especially the most able
  • teachers to check pupils’ understanding effectively, and identify and correct misunderstandings.
  • teachers to ensure that pupils embed key concepts in their long-term memory and apply them fluently.
  • the subject curriculum to be designed and delivered in a way that allows pupils to transfer key knowledge to long-term memory. It is sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before and pupils can work towards clearly defined end points.

Impact

We want our children to:

  • demonstrate confidence, independence, resilience and a real thirst for learning.
  •  to be able to form meaningful relationships based upon mutual respect and trust, recognising and celebrating difference, not only within the school community, but in the wider world as well.
  • have access to a wide and varied curriculum, allowing each of them to excel as individuals and be the best they can be.
  •  to achieve at least the expected standard across the curriculum by the end of Key Stage Two.
  • be well prepared to access the challenges of their secondary school curriculum.
  • have aspirations for the future and know that these can be realised with hard work and determination.
  • grow up being able to make a positive contribution to the world in which they live.
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