Our Curriculum

At Burlington Infant School we carefully design, plan and implement a curriculum which meets the needs of our children and provides breadth, balance and depth of learning for every child. It ensures our children know more and remember more as they progress through our school and are well prepared for the next stage of their learning journey.

We call this ‘The Head, The Heart and the Mind.’

Breadth of Learning  – the ‘Head’

At Burlington Infant School, all areas of development within the Early Years Curriculum and all subject areas within the Primary National Curriculum are carefully planned for and covered in full. We believe strongly in making links between subjects, where key knowledge and skills can be connected and when children can reinforce their learning by applying it in a range of different contexts. Research shows that this is how young children learn best.

We have organised aspects of the programmes of study for different subject areas into themes or topics, ensuring that full coverage and progression is achieved throughout each year group, and across each key stage. English, Maths, P.E., R.E., Music and Computing are taught as separate subjects but explicit links are made with the topic or theme, when appropriate, so that children’s knowledge, skills and understanding can be applied and revisited in a range of contexts.

We believe that this dual approach ensures that children have a rich and varied learning experience and are able to make connections across and between subjects. This makes learning meaningful and relevant for our curious, enthusiastic children.

Careful analysis and discussions about our pupils’ backgrounds, life experiences and culture, alongside detailed baseline assessments, have helped us to identify the following key priorities to be incorporated into each subject area, ensuring that our curriculum is tailored to meet the specific needs of our children;

• Developing oracy skills and vocabulary, to improve language and communication,
• Ensuring lots of practical, ‘hands on’ experiences to help our children become independent, resourceful learners
• Promoting outdoor learning opportunities and experiences as much as possible to develop stronger relationships and a greater knowledge and understanding of the world.
• Providing aspirational experiences to show children the wide range of possibilities available for their future.
• The explicit teaching of the skills needed to be a good learner, to help with metacognition and self-regulation.

The range of experiences we offer support and champion our culture and ensures that our children benefit from a full range of academic, spiritual, moral, social and cultural activities.  These activities enrich their lives and those of our whole school community and make them proud of their British values and the diverse society to which they belong and play an active part. We are proud that our curriculum gives our children the knowledge, skills, confidence and self-belief to lead a happy and fulfilled life. We encourage each child to aim high and tell them to ‘always do your best and be your best.’

Balance of Learning – the ‘Heart’

It is our underlying belief that every child should feel valued and experience the feeling of success in a wide range of curriculum areas. We believe that through the curriculum we can impact on how the children feel about themselves and raise their self-esteem so that they feel clever, confident and ready to tackle any challenge they may face.

We have designed, organised and planned our curriculum to ensure every child receives an appropriate mix of academic and personal development which means that, in practice, our curriculum places equal importance on every area of learning in both core and foundation subjects. As many opportunities as possible are provided to adapt the curriculum to meet the needs and interests of our children, so that they feel valued and that they have a ‘voice’ in their learning.

At Burlington Infant School, we place high priority on ensuring children’s physical and emotional needs are met. We understand that children will not be successful learners unless they feel secure, settled and happy at school. We therefore carefully design our curriculum and adopt a flexible approach to timetabling to ensure that we can meet and respond to any issues which may arise. Children’s physical and mental well-being are as valued and important as academic development.

We carefully monitor children’s progress with their personal development and our well planned and thoughtful approach to social, moral, spiritual and cultural development helps to ensure that every child is well cared for, nurtured and supported.

Our balanced approach to the curriculum is not at the expense of high standards in core subject areas. High standards and enabling children to reach national expectations, and above, is of vital importance if they are to succeed at the next stage of their education and go on to achieve full and happy lives and careers.

Our full and rich curriculum, with its excellent range of experiences, ensures that every pupil at Burlington Infant School makes excellent progress both academically and personally. Our unique curriculum ensures that every child is given the opportunity to shine and flourish and to be the best that they can be.

Depth of Learning – the ‘Mind’

At Burlington Infant School, our definition of progress is the widening and deepening of essential knowledge, skills, understanding and learning behaviours, so that our children learn more, remember more and understand more.  We design, organise and plan our curriculum to ensure that children are not merely covering content but achieving a depth and mastery to their learning which enables them to use their knowledge, skills and understanding in all areas of the curriculum.

Our careful curriculum design and planning, means that we build in many opportunities for repetition and practice of essential knowledge, skills and understanding in every subject. This ensures that children are able to revisit previous learning and connect to previous experiences. This allows them to gradually develop a deeper understanding and mastery of the knowledge, skills and processes within subjects at their own pace and in the best possible way for each individual child.

Our curriculum is meticulously designed and planned to ensure progression and move the nature of children’s thinking to a deeper level of understanding, rather than just acquiring new facts. It ensures they are ready to meet successfully the challenges of the next stage of their education and their lives.

Skills for Learning

Research shows that by helping pupils to think about ‘how’ they learn, and by explicitly teaching meta-cognitive strategies, schools can have a powerful impact on the progress made by pupils.

In order to do this, we teach the children that the skills of :

• Resilience,
• Responsibility,
• Readiness,
• Reflectiveness
• Resourcefulness

are important skills that we all need to be good learners. These skills run alongside and are integral to the delivery of our curriculum.

We call these the ‘5 R’s’ and we introduce them to the children, through the following ‘child friendly’ age appropriate characters.

Our curriculum complies with our duties in the Equality Act 2010 and the way in which we do this is explained on our Equality Policy.

Our curriculum complies with SEND regulations 2014 and the way in which we do this is outlined in our SEN Information.