Curriculum Overview

At Flamstead End School, we believe that our children learn best and are taught best when children and their teachers are engaged and excited about their curriculum. We strive to offer an irresistible learning experience for our children both in content and activities. We aim for our learning to be memorable and contextually relevant to our children whilst fulfilling the requirements of the National Curriculum.

Our curriculum offer seeks to expand our children’s understanding of the world around them, to create the adults of the future who are not only academically capable but spiritually, morally, culturally, artistically and physically capable as well. Our curriculum takes into account the perceived needs of the community around us and seeks to enhance the cultural learning of our children.

We have incorporated the notion that learning should be knowledge rich and yet contextually meaningful in the foundation subjects whilst planning the curriculum at Flamstead End School. Armed with the knowledge required from the national curriculum, our learners are set dilemmas and problem solving tasks to apply all that they have learned.

We have chosen to deliver the curriculum in explicit areas that the children are made aware of eg geography or history. Where it is logical and beneficial we make links between the learning in subject specific areas, but we avoid tenuous links. We can sometimes use our foundation subject focus to produce writing in our English sessions and do this only when it adds to the interest of the children and fulfils the curriculum requirements.

In EYFS and KS1, we believe that reading and writing are key to a successful academic career. We have put heavy focus on getting all children reading and writing by the time they leave KS1. We use a structured and successful phonics program called Read Write Inc., this is supplemented by our drive to read for purpose and pleasure in these phases. In KS2, we are able to develop our readers to have a sophisticated understanding of the texts they read through our daily reading sessions and well planned English lessons. Our English sessions are based around exciting texts and novels where the children can really deepen their understanding of a text and a writer's techniques. We have invested heavily in our libraries so that the children can all have access to good quality, well kept books.

Across all phases we follow the maths mastery approach. This is achieved by using the White Rose Maths programme and NCETM mastering number programme. We believe that by developing fluency and the language around maths we can consolidate the mathematical concepts required of the national curriculum. We use speaking frames for children to verbally make sense of and reason around their understanding of increasingly complex objectives. This approach begins in our foundation stage and continues through the school to Year 6. We encourage all children to use manipulatives such as Cuisenaire and Numicon throughout their learning and through all phases at Flamstead End.

We have high expectations for our children at Flamstead End and we anticipate that our learners have ambitious expectations too. Our curriculum seeks to nurture the effective learning behaviours that will ensure success whilst in our school and beyond such as resilience, determination and the ability to reflect. We encourage a growth mindset here at Flamstead End School and demonstrate to children that they have the tools, the collaborative help and the power to achieve. We aim for children to take responsibility for their own learning.

Please contact admin@flamsteadend.herts.sch.uk for further information about our curriculum.

The link to the information discussed at the Curriculum meetings can be found here: Curriculum-meeting.pptx