Curriculum Overview
At Hillside Primary School we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework and Primary National Curriculum 2014 as a basis for planning our curriculum offer. We try to link learning as often as possible via a thematic topic based approach. Pupils tell us this really helps them to understand their learning and remember what has been taught. Some subjects eg Maths, will be taught as separate lessons with opportunities to apply these skills across the curriculum.
We promote the early acquisition of basic skills and believe that speaking and listening alongside developing good reading skills and habits underpin all aspects of learning. In Early Years and Key stage 1 children learn phonics to help them understand how to blend and segment words for reading and writing. We use ‘Letters and Sounds’ to support the teaching of phonics.
As well as learning phonics children also have guided reading sessions and literacy lessons. In Early years, KS1 and Y3 guided reading uses levelled texts from a large range of resources including Oxford Reading Tree, Songbirds and Read Write Inc to ensure children meet a wide range of different text types and genres. From Y3 onwards pupils have whole class guided comprehension lessons to support both reading development and their ability to provide written answers to comprehension questions.
We also use DERIC – Decode, Explain, Retrieve, Infer and Choice; and ERNI – Everybody Reads, No interruptions to help develop good reading habits. It is important children read well as often as possible. We ask all parents to support home reading and regularly borrow reading books from school to read with your child.
Please use the link below to see our current topic based curriculum themes. More detailed medium term curriculum planning is available in the curriculum planning area on each class’s page on the website. Please do not hesitate to ask class teachers if you have any queries about the curriculum.
