Our Curriculum
Curriculum
Our curriculum has been designed to be relevant and enriching for all. It allows for the development of children’s reasoning and investigative skills. We have built in opportunities to revisit and embed knowledge, ensuring progression and challenge, which ultimately leads to fluency.
By ‘fluency’ we mean pupils' ability to use their thorough understanding of the curriculum and apply this knowledge creatively and flexibly across all subjects, using their own ideas.
Subjects Click on a subject below to see a curriculum and vocabulary overview for each subject. You will also find inclusion strategies and our policy for each subject.
Our English curriculum aims to develop pupils' communication skills in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Pupils develop their phonics, spelling, grammar and punctuation skills, as well as fluent handwriting. The curriculum focuses on developing a love for books and language, encouraging creativity and imagination, building vocabulary and comprehension. The English curriculum supports pupils' expression of ideas, effective collaboration in discussions, and critical thinking when reading texts.
Our maths curriculum helps children to develop strong foundations. It encourages reasoning, problem-solving and critical thinking. We want to foster a positive attitude towards mathematics, building confidence and curiosity, while nurturing an understanding of patterns, relationships, and the importance of maths in real-life situations.
At Highover School, we aim to inspire all children to enjoy science, apply it to everyday life and become scientists of the future. Science in our school is about developing our ideas and ways of working that enable us to make sense of, be curious about and explore our world.
The study of geography stimulates an interest in and a sense of wonder about places. It helps children make sense of a complex and dynamically changing world. It explains where places are, how places and landscapes are formed, how people and their environment interact, and how a diverse range of economies, societies and environments are interconnected. It builds on children's own experiences to investigate places at all scales, from the personal to the global.
A high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. Teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.
Our Physical Education curriculum strongly encourages children to exercise, team-build and to take on leadership and responsibility. Through our P.E. curriculum, children are taught to develop a range of physical skills, develop stamina and strength, develop an appreciation of fair play, honest competition and good sportsmanship, develop their qualities of movement and learn how to cooperate and work as a team. Pupils develop coordination and dexterity, self control and confidence.
At Highover we want every child to know and believe that they are an artist. We believe that every child is entitled to develop their critical and creative thinking skills, and to build their knowledge and understanding of materials and techniques, developing their experience of how they can make a creative response to a variety of stimuli.
Our Design & Technology curriculum inspires and engages learners, fostering creativity, problem-solving, and technical skills. Children are encouraged to think critically about sustainability and enterprise while designing products that address real-world problems. These skills help them succeed in later life.
Learning a foreign language provides an opening to other social and cultural experiences, fosters children's curiosity and deepens their understanding of the world. This develops their immediate sense of belonging to the wider world, contributes to their mutual understanding, a sense of global citizenship and personal fulfillment. Our teaching helps enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to speakers accordingly.
Music is a universal language and music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music thereby increasing their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose and to listen carefully.
The Jigsaw PSHE curriulcum provides pupils with the knowledge, understanding, attitudes, values and skills they need in order to reach their potential as individuals and within the community. They learn to recognise their own worth, work well with others and become increasingly responsible for their own learning. They learn to understand and respect our common humanity; diversity and differences so that they can go on to form the effective, fulfilling relationships that are an essential part of life and learning.
RE provokes challenging questions about the ultimate and purpose of life, beliefs about God the self and the nature of reality, issues of right and wrong and what it means to be human. It challenges pupils to reflect on, consider, analyse, interpret and evaluate issues of truth, belief, faith and ethics and to communicate their responses. RE aims to enable pupils to become religiously and theologically literate so they can engage in life in an increasingly diverse society.
Computing skills are fundamental in today's digital world. Computing encourages logical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving, which are transferable to other subjects and real-world situations. We want our pupils to develop the skills necessary to become digitally literate and participate fully in the modern world.