Curriculum

Curriculum Intent

At Polesden Lacey Infant School, we teach a curriculum that is exciting, fun and imaginative. Children are engaged in thinking, questioning and learning. The school enriches the National Curriculum programmes of study and motivates and engages pupils by ‘bringing learning to life.’ All areas of the curriculum are valued and enrichment opportunities are offered across the year, including a wide variety of clubs.

In order for our pupils to be well-prepared for the next phase of their education, we believe our curriculum and its implementation must develop pupils who are enquiring, independent, have a growth-mind set and high aspirations. Where appropriate we aim for our curriculum to be enquiry based, provoking questions and challenging the thinking of our pupils. Alongside these qualities needed for academic success, we aim for our school values to pervade our approach, so developing a sense of caring, resilience, courage, curiosity, fairness and respectful are just as important.

We aim for our curriculum to be meaningful to all children. We plan carefully to develop the progression of skills and knowledge. The content of each subject is sequential, building on prior learning and ensuring a depth of understanding is achieved. We allow our curriculum to have some fluidity to follow children’s interests or respond to topical events and pupils’ individual needs.

High academic standards are an important goal for the school. Our focus is on developing a love of reading, promoting maths fluency, supporting children to have a broad vocabulary and providing meaningful cross-curricular writing opportunities. Reading has a strong focus at Polesden Lacey Infant School. In addition to being taught phonics and reading skills, children are encouraged to read for enjoyment and teachers read aloud high-quality texts in every class.

The school curriculum promotes respect, tolerance and diversity including, fundamental British values. Children are encouraged to express themselves through discussion and debating. This is done partly through our unique use of circle time where all pupils are involved in discussing both school issues as well as current national and international topics. Children are made aware of the potential for change that individuals can bring about through action, campaigning and lobbying. We promote a respect for our environment.

Children have opportunities for a wide range of enriching experiences and active learning. Our beautiful school and the local area provide a fantastic resource for teaching our curriculum, By the time our pupils leave us they will have built dens in the woods, drunk hot chocolate around a fire, explored Polesden Lacey House and visited our local mosque and synagogue. We also expect our children to have a good understanding of history, culture and geography beyond Bookham to enable them to have a wider understanding of the world.

Forest School is an integral part of the school. Pupils in all classes have weekly Forest School sessions. The children develop their resilience, risk taking and problem solving in a safe and supportive environment. All of these skills are then taken back into the classroom to support them with their academic learning and their personal and social development.

Curriculum implementation

Fundamental British Values permeate the work of the school. The school curriculum promotes respect, tolerance and diversity. Children are encouraged to express themselves through discussion and debating. This is done partly through our unique use of Circle time where all pupils are involved in discussing both school issues as well as current national and international topics. Children are made aware of the potential for change that individuals can bring about through action, campaigning and lobbying. All children also have the opportunity to participate in Forest School during curriculum time and this is being woven throughout the curriculum. To elect pupils for the local schools’ Infant Council the pupils in Year 2 held an election where pupils stood for election, make a short speech and then voted through a secret ballot.

Reading has a strong focus at Polesden Lacey Infant School.  We follow Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as our systematic synthetic phonics programme.  In addition to being taught phonics and reading skills, children are encouraged to read for enjoyment. Teachers read aloud high-quality texts in every class as well as providing story clubs, library challenges and author visits.

High academic standards are an important goal for the school, and our focus on whole class reading, promoting maths fluency, supporting children to have a broad vocabulary and providing meaningful cross-curricular writing opportunities are some of the ways we have deliberately focused on ensuring pupils leave our school literate and numerate.

At Polesden Lacey Infant School you will see a connected curriculum which allows children to make links between subjects and for knowledge to be revisited. Our curriculum is under constant review in response to developments in education, our local context and our intent for the children. The teaching of important skills is enlivened by strong school traditions, staff and local specialists and some fantastic local, national and even international resources. We carefully consider, through regular staff and smaller team meetings, how our curriculum will meet the needs of all our pupils, changing the content to focus on specific knowledge and key skills or to make the learning accessible to our pupils' range of abilities and interests.

The Christmas Tea Party, held during the Autumn term, provides a real purpose for developing musical and cookery skills, whilst giving the children the chance to meet older people from the community, learn organisation skills and use their initiative.

At Polesden Lacey Infant School you will see pupils embracing the curriculum in a variety of ways. For some, a local specialist or a school trip provokes a deep interest and pupils will choose to explore aspects of the curriculum in great depth, often at home. For others, the curriculum is simplified with very practical and physical experiences so that learning is memorable. Our recent work on forming curriculum progression maps, led by subject leaders, has been a key development in ensuring that the curriculum is not just exciting, but also ambitious providing appropriate challenge as children move through the school.

Curriculum Impact

The impact of our curriculum can be seen in the standards our children attain at the end of infant school. Children at Polesden Lacey Infant School make good progress and attain consistently better than national expectations at the end of key stage 1. In addition to our success in reading, writing and maths, our provision of enrichment opportunities enables pupils to achieve high standards across all areas of the curriculum. 

Our pupils also demonstrate the impact of our curriculum through their behaviour for learning; children are confident and successful learners. Buddy reading and peer-to-peer teaching ensure older children support younger pupils which helps to build relationships across the school community. Polesden Lacey pupils feel motivated and are not afraid of ‘having a go’ and 'stretching their brains'. They enjoy sharing their learning with each other and visitors.

Visitors to Polesden Lacey Infant School often comment on the behaviour of the children. They are caring and supportive of each other. Our pupils have a voice and know they are not too young to make a difference. The eco-friendly and the Fairtrade initiatives that the school adopts are driven by the children.

The impact can be seen in the way our pupils make the transition to their next school. Feedback from Junior schools that Polesden children attend, is overwhelmingly positive about their behaviour and attitudes to learning. 

The National Curriculum

The National Curriculum (NC) provides both the content and the framework for most of what we teach at Polesden Lacey Infant School. In the Early Years, children experience the seven areas of learning required as part of the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. Older children in Key Stage One are taught the ‘core’ subjects of English, Mathematics and Science and the ‘foundation’ subjects of History, Geography, Music, Art, Physical Education (PE), Design and Technology (DT), Computing and Religious Education (RE).

Where possible the curriculum is delivered through cross-curricular themes to connect work from different subjects together, allowing children to make effective links in their learning.

The National Curriculum also requires that children are ‘secondary ready’ by the time they leave primary school. At Polesden Lacey Infant School we believe that we are preparing the children to move to junior school. However, we also believe it is essential that the process by which this is achieved is as creative, engaging and exciting as possible, and instills an enthusiasm for learning which lasts long after the children have left this school.

Curriculum Intent Statements 

At Polesden Lacey Infant School we follow the Early Years  Framework and base our curriculum on Development Matter in Reception and the National Curriculum in Years 1 and 2, unless otherwise stated.

Art: Our Art curriculum aims for our children to be creative, thoughtful and reflective of the world around them. The thematic teaching of Art allows our children to explore different elements in a variety of ways, enabling them to make connections in their learning and therefore improve their cultural capital and sense of the world around them.

Computing: Our computing curriculum aims to develop our children to be confident, conscientious and excellent users of technology. Learning will be based upon computational thinking and staying safe online.

Design Technology: Our Design Technology curriculum aims to prepare children to participate in the development of today’s rapidly changing world. Design and Technology encourages children to become creative problem-solvers, both as individuals and as part of a team. Through the study of design and technology they combine practical skills with an understanding of aesthetic, social and environmental issues.

English: Our English curriculum aims to develop the children’s love of and competency in reading and writing, and be able to articulate clearly and express their opinion. Our curriculum will create an appreciation of literature by providing them with opportunities to read and listen to a wide range of stories, poems and other genres. We aim to create a curriculum, which inspires the children to write for a range of real cross-curricular purposes.

Geography: Our Geography curriculum aims to inspire pupils into being explorers and discovers of our world and its many varied environments. We aim to give the children an understanding of their place in our world and how we can help to protect the planet.

History: Our History curriculum aims to excite pupil about events in the past through them becoming detectives and researchers. We aim to foster an understanding of how the past influences the present and help children develop some chronological understanding.

Maths: Our curriculum recognizes that mathematics is an essential tool for life and we aim that the children can successfully use and apply their knowledge in a variety of situations. An emphasis will be placed upon fluency, reasoning and problem solving.

Music: Our music curriculum aims for children to use their creative skills to become confident performers and articulate listeners.

PE: Polesden Lacey Infant School recognises the importance of leading an active and healthy lifestyle. The intent of our curriculum is to foster a love of being active and healthy which will stay with the children in future life. Alongside this, we aim to develop the fundamental skills needed to partake in physical activity.

PSHE: Our PSHE curriculum aims to enable pupils to develop the knowledge, skills and attributes that they need to keep themselves healthy and safe, and helps prepare them for life and work in the modern and diverse world. We use the PSHE Association question lead curriculum.

RE: Our RE curriculum aims to expose our children to a variety of ideas, beliefs and practises to be confident to explain, identify and explore different religions and non-religious views. This promotes an understanding and tolerance of different cultures and beliefs. We use the Surrey SACRE to guide our syllabus.

Science: Our Science curriculum aims to nurture an enthusiastic curiosity in children, about our universe. It promotes understanding about and respect for our planet and its processes. The curriculum ensures that the children have a balance of key knowledge and vocabulary, specific scientific skills and first hand inspiring investigation. We use a variety of exciting ‘hooks’ and our amazing outdoor environment for learning as often as possible. 

Keeping Families Informed

We have high expectations of academic achievement at Polesden Lacey and we follow the progress of each child individually. We encourage parents and carers to take a keen interest in their children’s education and give regular updates on what their child is learning. Each term, class teachers send home a letter setting out the main subject areas to be covered. In addition, teachers keep parents informed through a weekly overview which gives further details about areas of the curriculum that have been taught during the week.

Pupil Wellbeing

We have a duty to promote pupil wellbeing and pupil safeguarding. Our PSHE education plays an important part in fulfilling all of these responsibilities. We use the PSHE association across the school to bring together all aspects of PSHE: emotional literacy, mindfulness, social skills, spiritual development, healthy living and relationships.

Progression of Skills 

We believe that children will be supported to learn best when they are able to make links with their learning and build on prior learning.  With this in mind we produced Progression of Skills maps.  These can be seen in the curriculum areas.

Curriculum Maps

Below you will find our current curriculum maps.