Curriculum
Recovery curriculum information
Recovery curriculum for September 2020
Remote education information
School Vision – At Lower Heath CE Primary School, our curriculum will give our pupils a rich understanding and knowledge of themselves and their place in their local, national and global communities. It will reflect the unique nature of our rural location and church family, whilst developing children’s understanding of the diversity and opportunities that the wider world provides. We will enable children to develop the knowledge, life skills and character to successfully and confidently take their next exciting steps in their education. They will have the self-belief to articulate and pursue their aspirational goals.
Lower Heath learning journey 2019-2020
Maths Curriculum
The mathematics curriculum is made of three different strands: fluency, reasoning and problem solving. The school follows the White Rose Maths scheme of learning.
We also support the use of so have included some information below:
Times Table Rock Stars – A Guide for Parents
Goal
When it comes to times tables, speed AND accuracy are important – the more facts your child remembers, the easier it is for them to do harder calculations.
Times Table Rock Stars is a fun and challenging programme designed to help students master the times tables!
To be a Times Table Rock Star you need to answer any multiplication fact up to 12×12 in less than 3 seconds!
How to get the most out of it
World famous rock musicians are the best at what they do because they’ve spent hours practising guitar chords, writing music or playing on the drums. It’s just the same with times tables – all Times Table Rock Stars need to practise and practise and practise.
It’s essential that your child does a little bit of times table practice every night. Short bursts of daily practise are more effective than spending hours once a week.
And this is where you come in. For your child to be fully motivated and for them to get the best out of the practice, they need your help. Without your praise and your reminders, without you sitting down next to them or checking their work, practising times tables will not feel important to your child.
In this guide, we have set out a plan for you to follow. It’s the same plan every night but the times tables change do change. Our recommendation is that you are there to help them every evening for half hour during the first two weeks. This will help to establish a routine. After that, we recommend that you help your child get started for the first 10 minutes and then check on them at the end.
Over the course of the next few weeks and months, your child WILL get faster and more accurate with the times tables. All your hard work and theirs WILL make them a Times Table Rock Star!
Rock Status
It’s helpful to understand that the quicker your child can answer a times tables question, the higher their Rock Status. Use this list as a guide to help your child work out their Rock Status:
| ≤ 1 sec/qu = Rock Hero
≤ 2 secs/qu = Rock Legend ≤ 3 secs/qu = Rock Star ≤ 4 secs = Headliner ≤ 5 secs/qu = Support Act ≤ 6 secs/qu = Breakthrough Artist |
≤ 7 secs/qu = Unsigned Act
≤ 8 secs/qu = Gigger ≤ 9 secs/qu = Busker ≤ 10 secs/qu = Garage Rocker > 10 secs/qu = Wannabe |
Practice Plan
Each evening, your child should follow this plan in the order presented below:
- Read the times tables out loud (3 minutes) – You will find a link to download all the times tables written out from the 3s up to the 12s. Together with your child, read the times tables that we are focusing on that week. Do it a second time round but this time your child should be trying to say them without reading them from the page. It is more important that they say them correctly than say them quickly at this stage.
- Scatter tables (up to 5 minutes) – To use them, you call out a question from the times table you are focusing on and your child should point to the answer on the page. For example, if you are concentrating on the 5 times table, then find the Scatter Table for the 5s and call out questions like, “9 times 5” (your child points to 45), “6 times 5” (your child points to 30) or “5 times 12” (your child points to 60). Your child should be trying to get them correct each time and not worrying about the speed.
- Write tables on a piece of paper (up to 5 minutes) – Your child should write down the times tables being focused on that week. Any piece of paper will do.
- Play online (up to 10 minutes) – Your child needs to have a login for ttrockstars.com from their class teacher. Then they should play for a short while until they are successfully answering the questions quickly. Let your child’s teacher know if you have difficulty accessing the internet or difficulty getting on to ttrockstars.com. You can also use the contact details on the website to ask for assistance.
Total: approximately 25 minutes
Reading and Phonics
We follow the attached planning for teaching spelling, punctuation and grammar – Overview. We use Letters & Sound for phonics (Overview) and Oxford Reading Tree for reading up to the end of Year 1. Once children have passed their phonics check, they progress to No Nonsense Spelling (Pathway) and Accelerated Reader (Parent Guide).
We also teach reading using reading VIPERS to help embed key reading skills. Attached are booklets for each key stage, explaining what the VIPERS skills are and providing questions stems which parents can use when they listen to their children reading.
Phonics
At Lower Heath School, synthetic phonics is taught as the main approach to early reading. Daily phonics sessions are taught from nursery to Year 2, but for some children the teaching of phonics continues in Key Stage 2 if this is necessary. These sessions follow the government published programme of ‘Letters and Sounds’. Each session is a daily 30-minute structured lesson, where the children have the opportunity to practice reading and writing. It is a fun session with lots of speaking and listening and working with a partner.
‘Letters and Sounds’ is split into 6 phases. These are expected to be taught during the following years, however this again may vary according to the needs of the children.
Phase 1 Nursery
Phase 2, 3, 4 Reception
Phase 4, 5, 6 Year 1
Phase 5, 6 Year 2
Writing
For writing, we follow the Talk 4 Writing structure (Talk for Writing Stages). Across the year, they cover the genres in the attached text type document – overview.
We use the Kinetic Letters programme to teach handwriting from Reception to Year 6 (Parent Information).
Religious Education
As a Church of England school, two thirds of our RE curriculum focuses on Christianity. For these elements of RE, we use ‘Understanding Christianity’, a new resource which is informative and engaging, and endorsed by Lichfield Diocese. The statement of entitlement can be found here.
Our long term planning can be found below:
Lower Heath Religious Education planning overview
Lower Heath worship rolling programme
Statement of entitlement for Church schools
Personal, Social, Health and Economic Curriculum
British Values
Below is an outline of how we at Lower Heath promote British values, and support the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of all pupils.
PHSE and Citizenship
Below is an outline of what is covered as part of our PHSE curriculum in each term, and in each year group.
Some of the topics are covered as discreet PHSE lessons, and others are incorporated into other areas of the curriculum.
Not all of the topics will be covered every year; issues are addressed on a rolling programme, re-visited at different depths, and are often moved to different times of the year according to the needs of the pupils.
Wider Curriculum
For more detail about the current topics, please refer to the class pages under the Parents and Pupils section on our website, which will be updated momentarily to reflect the new term. In the meantime an overview of what each class will be working on can be found by here Rolling Programme of Topics.
Curriculum
