Wider Curriculum Opportunities and Cultural Capital

Our curriculum at Tudor Grange Primary Academy Haselor extends beyond the National Curriculum and includes a wide range of enriching experiences and opportunities both within and beyond the school day.

The school takes pride in providing a highly inclusive environment, where learners demonstrate high levels of enjoyment in their education and make good progress across the curriculum.

All children are helped to achieve their potential and our enrichment curriculum provides opportunities for them to develop and learn new skills through a variety of planned experiences.

Off-timetable days are spread throughout the year, offering opportunities to participate in new experience activities and themed days. After-school clubs, support our core curriculum offer, as well as those which develop specialist skills.

Our Enrichment Curriculum is delivered through a variety of learning opportunities:

• Enrichment Pathways

Each child owns an Enrichment Pathway booklet which they participate in throughout the year. The activities give our pupils the opportunity to try new things and develop new skills which they may otherwise not have chosen to undertake. Such actvities can help children to grow in confidence, expand their understanding of the world around them, or introduce a hobby or passion that could last for years to come.

• Whole School Theme Days/Weeks

Throughout the year, themed days/weeks are woven into the curriculum to extend the breadth and balance of opportunities we offer our pupils. These include: Online Safety week, Science Week, World Book Day, Anti-bullying Week, Sport’s Day, Remembrance Day, Easter celebration day, Dimali celebrations, Autism Awareness day, Year 6 residential visits, theatre pantomime visits and focused art and Design Technology days.

• Forest School

Forest School is a Scandinavian initiative designed to encourage and inspire individuals of any age through an innovative, long term, educational approach to outdoor play and learning in a woodland environment.  As a school we are very fortunate in having our own woodland area and a teacher currently being trained to deliver the Forest Schools curriculum.

From September 2021 Forest School will be offered to all children from Nursery to Year 6 for 6 weeks every year.  Sessions are designed around the needs of the group to ensure that they are learner-led and activities are designed around a theme. In the child’s Forest School experience many areas of the National Curriculum will be intrinsically covered without the programmes needing to be curriculum led. Teamwork skills are developed through games and activities, while individual skills and self-esteem are heightened throughout activities such as hide and seek, shelter building, tool skills, lighting fires or environmental art –to mention but a few. At Haselor, we want to develop an environment where our pupils learn to take risks in safe and caring surroundings. Forest school activities will also enable pupils to develop their emotional resilience and personal determination so that they are better prepared to meet the challenges of life after primary school.

• Outdoor learning

Children are stimulated by the outdoors where they can undertake a range of practical activities to support and enhance learning across the curriculum. All pupils also benefit from tending their own growing beds to produce fruit and vegetables to use in cooking activities or to take home to share with their families.

Opportunities are built into the curriculum for children to continue learning beyond the classroom including undertaking geography and history field work and enquiry-based activities in the local area.

• After-school Clubs

As a school we offer pupils opportunities to participate in extra-curricular activities after school. At any time, a range of clubs is on offer – our programmes of clubs and activities available is revised termly depending on the time of year and other commitments children may have.

• PE & Sport

At Haselor we are using our PE & Sport Premium to fund for qualified sports coaches to deliver high quality sports and physical activities to encourage pupils to learn new skills during lunchtimes.  this combined with high quality instruction during PE lessons promotes increased pupil participation in PE & Sport throughout the school day.

In the summer term of 2020 we reviewed the school’s approach to the delivery of swimming lessons. This year children in Years 3, 4 and 5 will benefit from a whole term swimming (COVID dependent).

• Music, Art & Drama

At Haselor, we provide opportunities for children to take part in a wide range of musical activities and performances where they are encouraged to sing, compose and work creatively with sound.  A range of opportunities are provided within and beyond the curriculum for children to showcase their musical skills and talents, for example every two years our pupils take part in Young Voices where school choirs across the Midlands region come together to performance at the Indoor Arena in Birmingham.  Visits to the theatre further enriches pupils’ cultural development.

• Opportunities to Volunteer

We promote and encourage pupils’ active citizenship and positive contribution to the school and wider community. We offer lots of opportunities for pupils to take on new responsibilities and be involved in successfully supporting the life and work of the school. These include elected representatives on our School Council where we give children opportunities to influence decision making across the school as well as being House Captains when in year 6.

Older pupils can also fulfill positions such as Playground Leaders and within classes children can volunteer to take on various responsibilities ranging from caring for the guinea pigs, helping with the delivery of music in assemblies and being a peer mediator to support the pupils to resolve conflicts independently.

• Assemblies

A planned programme of assemblies helps to promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, and provide clear guidance on what is right and what is wrong. Once a week, assemblies are led by Beth Clarke our local Children and Families worker, and at least once a term child participate in a service at St Mary’s and All Saints, our local Church in Haselor. At the end of the school day on a Friday, our weekly celebration assembly is held where pupil’s special achievements are shared and the Truly Brilliant for the week in each class is awarded.