We deliver an academic, broad and balanced curriculum at Elstow. Within each class all the subjects are rigorously taught, with a focus on a high quality of instruction and a coherent and well sequenced series of lessons.
All children from Year 2 to Year 6 sit facing forward in rows which allows all their concentration on the lesson. Behaviour is well managed and supported through Senior Leadership learning wanders which happen multiple times daily. In addition, Advantage Schools Executive Leadership carry out learning wanders when they are on site and feedback observations of teaching and learning and the class environment to the Senior Leadership Team and this in turn is fed back to teachers.
All pupils have a rich academic curriculum in science and it is planned through the Primary Knowledge Curriculum. All children are taught how to think like scientists; they watch, to set up and record experiments, investigate and make sense of their findings and learn to connect what they have seen with what they already know. Pupils are also taught a cohesive and broad curriculum for history, geography, and art. All of these are carefully planned and taught in all year groups from EYFS to Year 6 and are supported through the Primary Knowledge Curriculum resources. Subject leaders oversee their curriculum and its content is always under review. The leaders oversee their subject at a whole school level and are able to answer the questions ‘Why this and why now?’ when discussing what the children are being taught. A schedule of enrichment is in place and constantly being improved upon, to support learning in the classroom. This takes the form of visits out, visitors into school and online extra activity and teaching such as the interactive zoo. Our modern foreign language is Latin, taught from Year 3, using the Classics for All resources. This is a valuable language which supports the critical vocabulary development for English and is the root language for many other foreign languages across Europe which pupils may learn once they reach secondary school.
For music, in addition to class lessons and a rich listening schedule, we access extra composition and performance opportunities through the Bedford Borough music service. For sport, our children have specialist coaches from Premier Sport. All children have at least two hours of quality sport a week. Swimming is included as part of the National Curriculum requirements and it is Year 4 who attend.
We work very hard on the content of our curriculum in each subject across all of our pupils’ seven years at Elstow to ensure that pupils gain the necessary knowledge to equip them to transition to secondary school as informed and capable young people.
