Here at Swell C of E Primary we pride ourselves in providing our children with a rich, broad, exciting and stimulating curriculum with a balance of tradtional and contemporary skills taught. Through our creative and inspired planned learning opportunities based on a full range of subjects, learning the key skills is exciting and fun. Our teachers bring the National Curriculum alive by making links between individual subjects and applying them to topics.Being a Church of England School we teach and demonstrate the values Jesus taught us and are accepting of all. Our values are promoted throughout the whole of school life and are linked, where appropriate, to our learning. We believe in making the learning fun, accessible and enjoyable and promote high expectations and standards of behaviour and teaching and learning.
We have excellent Key Stage Two SATS results, with children achieving greater depth above the national average, as well as good results in the now teacher assessed Key Stage One SATS. We place an importance on the key skills of reading, writing and maths yet equally provide wonderful experiences for our children.
We follow the 2014 National Curriculum, which can be found at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum. Punctuation, grammar and fluency in maths are taught in timetabled lessons in the mornings, placing an emphasis on core skills. Science and the foundation subjects are taught through exciting topics in the afternoons. We link English and maths to these topics, where appropriate, so that the children may use and apply the skills they have learned across the curriculum.
Phonics
Phonics is the primary building blocks to reading and writing. It teaches children the understanding between letters and sounds so it is really important to get it right! In school, we follow the Letters and Sounds programme of phonics as our main sheme but it is supported by the use of other programmes where necessary e.g. jolly phonics. Jolly phonics uses songs and actions to help support the children in their learning by giving them something visual or audio to help them remember. We continually improve our planning to adapt to meet the needs of our current cohorts. Additionally, we regularly assess the children's knowledge and feedback to parents so that they can continue to support their child at home.
Reading
As a school, we place a high importance on the value of learning to read but also reading to and with your child. Sitting down at the end of the day or before bedtime is a wonderful opportunity to spend relaxation time and enjoyment of stories together. We try very hard to listen to your child read in school on a one to one basis as frequently as possible. We also ensure that reading takes place throughout the curriculum through the whole school day. The children are encouraged to read in lesson times as whole classes, small groups, guided reading sessions or individually. We also have a well stocked library which is visited frequently by the children through directed sessions but also for pleasure.