At Denham Village School we pride ourselves in offering our pupils a broad, rich and varied curriculum. Our vision and values are at the core of everything we do and underpin our teaching and learning. As a school we have a long-standing commitment to being a community school working with the natural environment, music, sport and the arts to deliver academic excellence. These experiences not only serve to enrich the curriculum but help to develop confidence and make learning more enjoyable and memorable. We know that children learn best when they are offered exciting, engaging and immersive opportunities and this is fostered through our approach. We believe that learning should be fun, interactive and focused on children's own personal needs. We are committed to raising standards and providing the best education for every pupil in our school.

We provide a creative and enriched curriculum that is tailored to pupils needs, interests and experiences. Our staff work hard to make learning relevant and fun and our pupils thrive as a result. We provide our pupils with stimulating and awe-inspiring experiences. We believe that our pupils learn best when they experience ‘real’ learning and are immersed in experiences that will enrich their minds. We offer our pupils an exciting range of trips, visits and activities that provide unique opportunities and motivate learning.

We are committed to developing the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of each child enabling them to thrive and equipping them with the skills to become positive, thoughtful and caring citizens in school and in the wider world.

We want all our pupils to be outstanding learners; to be happy, take risks and enjoy all the opportunities that our school offers.

Our curriculum is organised as part of a rolling programme of topics to reflect the mixed nature of year groups we teach. Each topic contains a coverage of key skills and breadth across the curriculum, which enables links to be made across subjects - promoting creativity and enjoyment for all children. We use the National Curriculum as the definitive guide to ensure coverage of the curriculum. We strive for excellence at all times, aiming to inspire and motivate all children through the way in which we teach.

We teach all National Curriculum statutory subjects – English, Maths, Science, ICT, History, Geography, Art, Design Technology, PE and Music + Religious Education. In addition, we teach Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE) and Forest School throughout the school. Pupils are taught swimming and French at KS2.

We structure and plan the curriculum to ensure that good practice remains central, equality of opportunity is ensured and we integrate the requirements National Curriculum into our topics, projects and subject teaching.

We have formulated a series of guidelines and schemes of work designed to aid the delivery of the National Curriculum. These guidelines are used by staff when planning both over the whole year and termly. It enables us to ensure a balance of learning across the school.

Each term/half-term every class chooses an overall topic, divided into units of work, to deliver the curriculum. Each topic is planned and developed using the National Curriculum, as well as school policies and guidelines. From the termly/half-termly plan staff prepare weekly timetables for the class to deliver concepts and skills. The teacher prepares differentiated activities for each of the subjects and through on-going assessment and record keeping, addresses the needs of all the children. Yearly plans can be accessed below for each class.

We have four intentions when it comes to measuring the impact of our curriculum.

Intention 1: to develop our learner’s learning

We strive to ensure that our children’s attainment in core and foundation subjects is in line with or exceeding their age related expectations when we consider the varied starting points of children. We measure this carefully using a range of materials, but always considering where they should be for how old they are. We intend that the impact is that children will be academically and physically prepared for the next phase of their education, in Britain and the world.

Intention 2: Develop the character of our learners

The impact will be that our learners will have fully rounded characters with a clear understanding of our values: respect, independence, resilience, kindness and aspiration. Only by really learning what these mean will our learners be able to develop a character that prepares them for living in the community demonstrating tolerance and equality. We measure this not just by the work our children produce, but in the behaviours we see each and every day in all learners on the playground, in the corridor, and in the many roles we give them. The impact of this intention is seen in the daily interaction of all members of our school community

Intention 3: Develop behaviours and habits to become effective learners

The impact we intend to achieve by developing this intention is seen by how the children approach challenges every day. This could be on the playground, in a game or disagreement, or in class in a complex learning challenge. The impact should be that children don’t give up, are highly motivated to succeed and achieve and are equipped with all the personal skills to do this.

Intention 4: Develop the moral compass of our learners

Our learners will be motivated by a strong personal sense of morality. They will make decisions for the right reasons and in the best interests of their community. They will be able to decide what is right and what is wrong, and will be resilient to the influence of others. They will go out into the world and make a difference in their own life and to others. Our learners will be the owners of their own destinies.

Our approach is founded on the belief that the curriculum should be child-centred, based on practical, hands-on, concrete experiences, so that each child can build his/her knowledge, skills, concepts and attitudes through understanding.

We assess where each child is when s/he enters school at whatever key stage. We begin from that point and take the child through the curriculum at a pace appropriate to individual needs, so that each may be offered an equal opportunity to achieve their full potential.

Our aim is to deliver a broad, balanced, relevant and exciting curriculum which is designed to develop a love of learning which will last a lifetime and cover the physical, spiritual, moral, social, aesthetic, literate, mathematic and scientific development of our pupils.

Our classes are organised in mixed year groups due to the small scale nature of the school. Much of the teaching in school is done on an individual or small group basis in order to accommodate the widely differing abilities and stages of development of the children within a class, but class teaching is not neglected as it contributes to the community spirit of the class and school.

Provision is made for additional help to be given to individual chil­dren where this is considered to be beneficial.

We use a thematic topic based approach with younger children as a vehicle to teach all areas of the curriculum and develop basic skills.

This approach enables older children to become more independent learners – undertaking research, presenting investigations, and setting personal targets.

As teachers we strive to improve the teaching and learning in our school through a process of on-going personal evaluation. In the same way we believe that the children should develop the skill to evaluate their own performance against agreed success criteria leading to the setting of achievable targets designed to help them move on their learning. This approach is a way of developing lifelong learning skills that can be adapted to any area at any stage of life.

Subject teaching for the oldest children offers the opportunity to study a subject in its own right to a greater depth.

It is essential that we also teach Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education, and seek to ensure that cross-curricular issues of global and environmental education and equality of opportunity are included in all topics as part of our aim to offer a curriculum that goes beyond the confines of the National Curriculum to educate the whole child.

PE is taught each week by our class teachers and sports coaches. We also have extra provision within school clubs. The Sports Premium focuses on developing sports provision in schools, providing extra training for teachers and enabling them to work alongside sports coaches. We work in partnership with other small schools in our locality which gives our children the opportunity to take part in a variety of competitions and festivals.

Evaluation of topics and subject areas taught ensure that breadth and balance are maintained and that all curriculum areas are covered. It is also necessary at times to teach an aspect of a sub­ject area outside a unit of work, to give the aspect further emphasis and depth. We all have high expectations of the children; we give them praise and encouragement; we aim to deliver a full curriculum which is aimed to develop the whole child. The emphasis is always upon what the individual child can do.

The Headteacher, senior staff and curriculum subject leaders undertake a programme of regular monitoring of the planning, delivery and organisation of learning across the school.

The teacher is continuously assessing his/her children as a natural, integrated part of his/her practice: his/her intentions are to sum up where a child is (formative), so as to plan where to take the child on next, and to diagnose any difficulties (diagnostic). Detailed records are kept. At the end of Key Stages 1 and in future Key Stage 2 all children will undergo the national SATs (Standard Assessment Tasks) (summative) and results are reported to parents.

Parents are invited to discuss their child’s progress in the autumn and spring term. Detailed annual reports are sent home in the summer term and parents are given the opportunity to book a follow-up appointment, if needed. Full records are kept on all aspects of your child’s school life, and are available for parents to see. If you do wish to see any of these, please contact the Headteacher.