Curriculum
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Curriculum for Wales Summary
The curriculum, which is designed and developed by teachers, will support children with a focus on positive, experiences, knowledge and skills. It will meet their needs and support them in achieving their full potential.
Our vision is to cultivate excellence and enjoyment in learning and teaching, within a stimulating and caring environment, where the achievements of all are celebrated.
The Federation of Bedwas Junior and Rhydri Primary Schools has been working hard developing a bespoke curriculum for our pupils. The first steps on our journey were based on developing the pedagogy of our staff, supporting them as they moved forward as reflective practitioners who were proactive in seeking out new ideas and ways in which they could develop their own practice. For the last 4 years, we have trialed many approaches and practices evaluating their effectiveness and considering how well they met our own ethos and vision for a school curriculum. Staff engaged with professional learning activities such as curriculum workshops and training, working closely with colleagues in our cluster schools.
The curriculum is dynamic allowing staff to respond to changes in the world around us, locally, nationally and internationally.
Pupil voice has and will continue to be an essential part of our curriculum offer alongside staff direction and expertise. We are now reaching out to the parents and carers of our children to learn about the expertise and interests they hold which can support our curriculum offer as well as to engage with them to see how they can help us make the most of our schools’ individual localities and settings.
Guiding everything we do are the four purposes.
Our children will learn:
Literacy skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing in Welsh and in English.
Numeracy skills –using numbers in everyday life.
Digital skills.
Learning will be done through the six areas of learning and experience
The six areas are:
Expressive Arts - pupils will explore through Art, Dance, Film, Drama, Music and Digital Media.
Health and Well-being - Pupils will learn about having a healthy body and a healthy mind. They will understand about healthy relationships and how to make good life decisions.
Humanities - Pupils will explore history, geography, business studies and social studies. They will explore and learn about religions, values and ethics.
Languages, Literacy and Communication - Pupils will learn and understand different languages. They will learn to use English, Welsh and Spanish.
Maths and Numeracy - Pupils will understand and use numbers and symbols. They will learn about shapes and measurement. They will learn how to collect and use information to make decisions.
Science and Technology - Pupils will learn about nature and living things. They will learn skills to design and build things. They will understand how technology works and how to use it to solve problems.
Children will also learn about:
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
Respecting people’s differences, such as their beliefs, values or their cultural background
The world of work and how to choose the kind of work you want to do.
Wales, their local area and the world.
Relationships and sexuality, learning about things like feelings, healthy relationships and how we think about ourselves.
The learning that takes place might be cross-curricular with particular themes or projects acting as the vehicle for the development and linking of a variety of skills and knowledge from two or more AoLEs. There is still the flexibility, where appropriate, to look at specific subjects in isolation.
As a school, we use a variety of methods and platforms that form the core of our assessment cycle. All of the strategies and approaches used place the child at the centre.
Staff engage with The Statements of What Matters, The Progression Steps, The Skills Frameworks and other curriculum guidance.
Descriptions of learning provide guidance on how learners should progress within each Area of Learning and Experience as they journey through the continuum of learning.
There are five progression steps that provide reference points for the pace of that progression. While the learning continuum is the same for each learner, the pace of progress through it is individual to each learner. As a result, the progression steps only broadly relate to age with a set of expectations at ages 5, 8, 11, 14 and 16.
Assessment is expected to focus on identifying each individual learner’s strengths, achievements, areas for improvement and, where relevant, barriers to learning.
This information is used by the teacher along with other formal assessment data such as national literacy and numeracy tests and Cognitive Ability Tests in order to guide their learning offer.
As a cluster we have developed a ‘core’ assessment offer which will be the same in all our schools. There is also an ‘enhanced’ assessment offer where individual schools are able to deploy programmes they feel are effective in their own settings.
We are in the middle of an ongoing process of developing the most effective approach to learning which will maximise the staff input and support learners to make the best progress they can.
The review of our curriculum is a planned and intrinsic part of our self-evaluation cycle. It will be constantly reviewed at class teacher level, reviewed and monitored by Area of Learning and Experience Teams at identified points in the school year as well as being reviewed and monitored by the Senior Management Team. Governors are linked to specific teams and are therefore part of the process.
The reviews will, at different times, involve pupil, parent or staff voice, activity observations, learning walks, data analysis or book looks amongst other methods. Outcomes from these different levels of review will be presented to the full governing body and/or relevant governing body sub-committees as part of the normal process of accountability.
Findings from these different levels of review will inform the Federation’s next steps and future development plans.
Follow this link to learn more about the curriculum we follow:
Music
At Bedwas and Rhydri, we pride ourselves in encouraging musical talents. We provide a range of lessons from different peripatetic teachers.
Violin lessons with Miss Evans are every Monday.
Brass lessons with Mr Wheeler are every Friday.
Guitar lessons with Mr Shankland are every Monday.
Woodwind lessons are every Thursday.
Cello lessons with Mrs Liddington are every Thursday.
All lessons are priced at £30.00 per term.
Cymraeg
We love our heritage and believe strongly that every child should have the opportunity to develop the Welsh language. Through a series of specifically designed schemes, children develop oracy, reading and writing skills that can help them communicate in Welsh. Welsh is taught every day in class and reinforced through incidental Welsh in other lessons. Furthermore, we celebrate our Welsh heritage through events like St David’s Day and our Eisteddfod.
Here are some Welsh apps and websites that can help you learn Welsh:
Say Something In Welsh
Ap Geiriaduron
Ap Treiglo
Spanish
We want our children to have an understanding and respect for people from different cultures, lifestyles and customs. We want to expand their personal horizons, instil in them a love of learning languages and the importance of it. By learning languages, such as Spanish, foster inquisitive minds, self-discipline and self-motivation. Studying Spanish improves the children’s analytic and interpretative capacities as well as their, linguistics, cognitive, social and emotional skills.
Blended Learning
Please see our pandemic page for the blended learning policies the school holds.
Accessing Hwb
Accessing Mymaths.co.uk
Accessing Adobe Creative Cloud
Accessing J2E