Curriculum
Our vision
At Brightside Nursery Infant School we will provide a safe, secure, nurturing, supportive, bright and well resourced environment. All our children will be happy, well behaved, caring, investigative, and innovative in order to reach their full potential in all aspects of their development. We will plan and deliver a personalised curriculum based on first-hand experience which recognises and builds on the experience for each child.
If you have any questions about the school curriculum please speak to our curriculum leader Miss Louisa Frost.
Our Curriculum Intent
Intent
At Brightside Nursery Infant School, the inclusive curriculum is designed to: recognise children’s prior learning, provide first hand learning experiences, allow the children to develop communication skills, build independence, concepts, coherence and memory. It is progressively sequenced to support each child to know and remember more with increasing fluency as they are challenged to achieve their expected end points. It is aimed to provide each child with a bright start to lead to a brighter future as they grow both physically and mentally.
We celebrate and welcome differences within our school family and wider community. The ability to learn is underpinned by the teaching of basic skills, knowledge, concepts and values. We strive to develop a unique, curriculum based around our local context to engage, stimulate and deepen learning. It will have the power to inspire and rekindle curiosity in each child. It will support them to reconnect and make sense of their experience. Our overall aim is to provide children with the ability to become reflective, creative and resilient learners who aim high to succeed in life. We use a Learning Challenge curriculum as a vehicle to enable all our learners to become confident, respectful problem solvers who have the capability to overcome barriers that they face.
We continue to adapt our curriculum to ensure that we recover missed content and ensure that all pupils are supported to close gaps in key knowledge & skills. We will endeavour to make sure that children are provided with support in all aspects of the personal, social and emotional education so are ready to learn.
Children leave Brightside with a sense of belonging to a tightly knit community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections and become lifelong learners.
Implementation
The curriculum incorporates the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum 2014 and the EYFS Statutory Framework 2021 as well as other experiences and opportunities which best meet the learning and developmental needs of the children in our school. Our Learning Challenge curriculum has been designed and implemented to ensure that it not only develops key knowledge, concepts and skills but provides a range of experiences that foster each child’s curiosity and interest. The local context plays a vital role in the curriculum with many topics based on the community we serve. Opportunities for the child’s voice are planned at the beginning of each new topic and this is used to inform the learning for each topic to ensure relevance.
At Brightside, our key priority is to ensure that each child achieves the very best outcomes, with a particular emphasis on developing the basic skills in speaking and listening, reading, writing and maths. The curriculum provides children with memorable experiences, in addition to diverse and rich opportunities from which children can learn and develop a range of transferable skills. Each topic is planned around a high quality text, ‘a book for a hook’. This text forms the basis for the key curriculum drivers and for reading, writing and speaking and listening opportunities.
The school’s focus on basic skills have been recognised as being of high quality with the ‘Quality Mark’. We also hold the Eco School Green Flag award which demonstrates our drive for sustainability across the curriculum. The school makes a conscious effort to engage parents/carers in all aspects of school life. Parents/ carers attend class workshops where they participate in sessions that enable them to support their child at home. Their contribution to school life has been acknowledged by the Leading Parent Partnership award.
Music and the arts have a high profile in the school and the school has a specialist music teacher, with each child receiving a weekly music and art lesson. Children learn key knowledge and skills as through half termly design and technology projects which are linked to each topic. Our accreditation of the Artsmark Gold award clearly demonstrates how highly we value creativity in a child’s personal development.
We endeavour to further enrich our curriculum with visits to enhance the children’s experiences and to bring topics alive. We strive to use the local area as much as possible to make links with the community. We also have regular visitors into school such as a Greentop Circus, a theatre company and an author to develop children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
A varied timetable for extra-curricular activities is offered by the school, with clubs that support the curriculum, as well as those which develop specialist skills, such as cycling and Greek club, whilst also extending the range of children’s experiences. A primary focus of our curriculum is to raise aspirations, engender a sense of personal pride in achievement, and provide a purpose and relevance for learning.
The school takes pride in providing a highly inclusive environment, where learners demonstrate enjoyment in their education and make excellent progress due to consistently high expectations. Children at all levels are encouraged to achieve their maximum potential. Those who are most able are challenged and supported through being offered tasks which provide opportunities for greater depth and those who need support are encouraged and given targeted provision to embed skills, to develop at their own pace or simply to learn in a style that best suits their individual needs.
Curriculum leaders play an important part in the success of the curriculum by leading a regular programme of monitoring, evaluation and review and the celebration of good practice contributes to the ongoing commitment to evolve and improve further. All subject leaders are given training and the opportunity to keep developing their own subject knowledge, skills and understanding, so they can support curriculum development and their colleagues throughout the school.
Impact
At Brightside we strive for all pupils to achieve their maximum potential, by having high expectations and excellent standards. We achieve excellent results in terms of academic success. Our children make rapid progress from entry into Foundation Stage and, by the end of Key Stage 1, achieve extremely well when compared with national and local results. Our stimulating curriculum teaches basic skills in speaking and listening, reading and writing, whilst actively promoting all other curriculum areas. It is reassuring for parents/carers to know that we have a proven track record of supporting all children successfully to maximise their full potential across the curriculum.
Our children enjoy lessons and we believe this early love of learning stimulates children to become life-long learners. Our work on promoting social skills including good manners, resilience, self-awareness, consideration and cooperation throughout the curriculum enables children to become fantastic role models and the very best version of themselves.
Assessment
Pupils are assessed at the end of reception and at the end of year 2. Please use this link for more information.
KS1 exemplification materials for reading
KS1 exemplification materials for writing
KS1 exemplification materials for maths
At Brightside NI School, we use the Sheffield STAT for teacher assessment from nursery to year 2. Please click here for more information.
