HAMPRESTON CE VA FIRST SCHOOL

Our curriculum is the heart of what we teach. It determines and shapes our pupils’ educational experience at Hampreston CE VA First School. Our school is a true community school with a warmth that permeates our buildings. The family ethos of our school is our great advantage and dovetails perfectly with our Christian distinctiveness.

The curriculum is carefully designed, planned, and organised to meet the ever-changing world in which we live. The uniqueness of every child is recognised and valued. We want every child to feel valued and experience success in a wide range of curriculum areas. Through the curriculum, we can impact how children feel about themselves so that they become resilient, courageous, and confident learners.

Our curriculum embraces opportunities to support pupils to become thoughtful, outward-looking, motivated, collaborative, and innovative learners, capable of engaging in their own lifelong learning journey and thriving in a world that is ever-changing.

To make learning as interesting, meaningful, and engaging as possible for the children, our curriculum is based on curiosity and questioning. Children are active participants in their learning journey and we promote skills in creativity, critical thinking, following a line of enquiry, and developing a sense of awe and wonder.

At Hampreston, our definition of progress is the widening and deepening of essential knowledge, skills, understanding, and learning behaviours. We design, organise, and sequence our curriculum to ensure that children are not merely covering content but achieving depth to their learning. We provide opportunities for our children to move beyond being passive recipients of knowledge to teaching the skills to drive forward their own learning. Ultimately it enables children to know more and remember more. Sequencing means that we build in opportunities to revisit previous learning, which allows children to build upon their prior knowledge and gradually develop a deeper understanding of the skills and processes within the different subjects, in the best possible way for each individual child.

We place great emphasis on our children being equipped with the skills to learn, we do this through a Growth Mindset approach. The iceberg analogy shows the underlying skills of the Growth Mindset that we encourage; in school, we refer to it as “growing our brains”. Each day we grow our brains and learn from our mistakes, our experiences, from each other and rise to challenges. We are inspired by the successes of others and believers in the power of determination, resilience, and “can do”. 

We embrace the cultural capital of our families and our geographical location. Careful analysis and discussion about our pupils’ backgrounds, life experiences, and culture, have helped us design a curriculum with key priorities underpinning every subject area. These priorities will help our children to be ready to succeed in the challenges of the next stage of their education and lives.