At Shirley Manor we strive to provide a tailor-made curriculum that engages and inspires our children, providing them with rich and memorable experiences alongside lifelong knowledge and skills. We firmly believe that our curriculum should reflect our diverse and ever-changing community and provide them with opportunities to learn about their own heritage alongside developing their understanding of other cultures and religions. We provide wider opportunities for children to develop as independent, confident, successful learners with high aspirations who know how to make a positive contribution to their community and the wider society. There is a high focus on developing children’s moral, spiritual, social and cultural understanding as well as basic skills. The academy ensures that children are well prepared for life in modern Britain.
Our curriculum for years one to six, is based on the National Curriculum 2014 and for nursery and Reception, the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, Development Matters. Our curriculum is designed to ensure coverage and progression.
Our curriculum design ensures that the needs of individuals and small groups of children can be met within the environment of high quality first wave teaching. Our curriculum ensures that we never put a ceiling on a child’s learning so that they are able to maximise the opportunity to achieve their full potential and to impact in a positive way on pupil outcomes. Enjoyment of the curriculum promotes achievement, confidence and good behaviour. Children feel safe to try new things and know that they can learn from their mistakes.
High quality visits and visitors into the school enhance the curriculum and provide opportunities for writing for a purpose. To promote physical health and wellbeing, a range of clubs gives learners an opportunity to access a wide variety of sports clubs after school hours.
Establishing close links between home and school are key to enabling pupils to achieve their full potential. Therefore, the half termly curriculum overview along with the must knows is sent out via our ClassDojo App and is available on the school’s website for parents to access. ClassDojo provides a window to classroom learning for parents and an essential way of bringing learning home. Parents can share and join in with the learning experience of their child and help them to retain knowledge by asking them questions based on the information on the ‘must knows’.
To ensure effective learning throughout the school, we incorporate our core values into our curriculum: Friendship, Kindness, Tolerance, Honesty, Perseverance and Resilience. We believe that the social and emotional aspects of learning should be a key focus for our work with the children and understand that the factors that can hold back the learning of our children include children’s difficulties in understanding and managing their feelings, working co-operatively in groups, motivating themselves and demonstrating resilience in the face of setbacks. Through the combined use of the ‘values approach’ and our bespoke curriculum, we are able to create children who are effective learners. When our children leave school at the end of year six, we strive for them to be well rounded individuals who have the necessary literacy and numeracy skills to succeed in life whilst having experienced an inspiring curriculum which gives them every chance to succeed.
More information about our curriculum and how is it sequenced can be obtained by contacting the school and looking at the sections below as well as our class pages.