Vision & Drivers

Vision

At Altofts Junior School, our vision is to provide an education and environment that enables pupils to be independent life-long learners, who are accepting and understanding citizens, prepared exceptionally well for life beyond our school.

Drivers

Our curriculum is designed taking into account the needs of our pupils; their prior learning and experience; the National curriculum; and the findings of educational research. It is built on the following six key drivers:

Numeracy and literacy

Our core subjects provide pupils with the opportunity to secure the numeracy and literacy skills. We place high importance on building on the early reading and phonics skills secured in the infant schools. We expose children to rich, high quality texts throughout school to nurture a love of reading. Small steps, regularly practised and built upon, together with time spent securing fluency and automaticity are designed to release cognitive load, allowing pupils to access the more complex concepts of the curriculum we offer. Ultimately, this allows pupils to know more, remember more, understand more and attain more.

Oracy, Communication and vocabulary

Oracy is taught progressively across the curriculum providing pupils with the tools to express themselves effectively. We plan for pupils to explain, collaborate, present and debate within the curriculum and ensure everyone is valued and knows that their opinion is important. Specific vocabulary is chosen and explicitly taught across the curriculum to help understanding and communication of both substantive and disciplinary curriculum knowledge.

Independence & resilience: Understanding what it means to be a learner

Our curriculum is delivered through our Teaching and Learning principles at the heart of which are metacognitive strategies. Pupils learn how to become self-regulated learners aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and able to motivate themselves to engage in, and improve, their learning. We want pupils to take responsibility for their learning and understand that they can learn from their mistakes which builds resilience. Pupils see the importance of re-drafting and critiquing their work in order to create the best outcome that they can possibly achieve: we strive to help pupils understand that with practice and determination, they can achieve amazing things, instilling a good work ethic for life.

High aspirations

Through our curriculum, pupils will become confident in their own potential and have high aspirations leading to high outcomes in attainment and progress. This is delivered in a variety of ways: ‘every child should campaign’ focusing on key life skills children should acquire and be exposed to; a range of educational visits and visitors to school with wider curriculum links allowing for real experiences and immersive learning; and links to future careers embedded into the curriculum along with explicitly themed events. Exposure to these things provides pupils with ambition and aspiration to be life-long learners. They have a readiness for the next stage of their education and beyond into adulthood.

Physical & Mental health and self-regulation

Accepting and understanding of individuality and the wider world

We want our pupils to learn to understand and empathise with people who are both different and similar to themselves. We will teach children to learn to discuss their ideas and speak appropriately for themselves, advocate for others, challenge stereotypes and become resilient individuals. Pupils will learn about a range of cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds and that everyone should have equality of opportunity. We teach our pupils to have empathy, respect and acceptance for the diverse range of people that they may encounter in the wider world.