Our Curriculum
Our School Curriculum
Lodge Lane Infant School Values:
Kindness, Teamwork, Challenge, Respect, Curiosity, Perseverance
Intent
At Lodge Lane, we believe that our responsibility is to promote children’s social and emotional development as well as their academic achievement, and we believe that there are strong links between the two. We want children to become happy and confident individuals with ambition and the ability to fulfil their potential. We achieve this through the combined use of the Responsive Classroom and the Emotion Coaching approaches. Responsive Classroom is centred around the development of a classroom and whole-school community. This approach focuses on developing the social and emotional skills of co-operation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy and self-control, and the academic competencies of academic mindset, perseverance, learning strategies and academic behaviours. Emotion Coaching is based on the principle that nurturing and emotionally supportive relationships provide optimal contexts for the promotion of children's outcomes and resilience. Our inquiry-based curriculum enables us to embed all of the above, as well as developing many other qualities in the children e.g. resilience, independence, confidence, motivation, tolerance and curiosity.
Our intent is for our children to leave Year 2 fully prepared for their next stage of education, having fulfilled their potential in their academic achievement whilst also being well-rounded individuals with the social, emotional and academic skills they need to continue their development at junior school.
Implementation
At Lodge Lane, we follow the National Curriculum in Key Stage 1 and Development Matters in EYFS, delivering them through a values-led approach. In each curriculum area, learners are taught the skills and content in a clearly structured way that enables them to build on prior knowledge and achieve high standards. At Lodge Lane, we teach the curriculum through Imaginative Inquiry which provides learners with a rich and meaningful context and gives them a clear purpose and reason for their learning. This also allows learners to engage with issues and questions from the real world, and prepares them for their future life.
Within the Responsive Classroom approach, every day begins with a class Morning Meeting, in which children are greeted and have an opportunity to share ideas with the group. They engage in fun and purposeful activities which helps to prepare them for the school day and enable them to make links to the curriculum. Children finish the day with a Closing Circle, which we believe creates a calm atmosphere for the end of the day and supports school to home transition.
We use Emotion Coaching with children during moments of heightened emotion and resulting behaviour to guide and teach the child about more effective responses. Through empathetic engagement, the child's emotional state is verbally acknowledged and validated, promoting a sense of security and feeling 'felt'. This activates changes in the child's neurological system and allows the child to calm down, physiologically and psychologically.
Responsive Classroom and Emotion Coaching form the foundation of our Behaviour and Self-Regulation Policy, using clear teacher language and logical consequences to support children in making the right decisions and learning from times when this goes wrong. We believe that it is important for children to come up with their own class rules based on their hopes and dreams for the year. Collaborating with the children in this way means that they have ownership of their rules and are invested in following them.
Impact
Pupils consistently achieve highly and their work across the curriculum is of a consistently high quality. Reception children are ready for Key Stage 1 and Year 2 children are ready for Junior School, and have the knowledge and skills necessary to build upon and continue their strong progress in Year 3. They read widely and often, with fluency and comprehension appropriate to their age. They are able to apply mathematical knowledge, concepts and procedures appropriately for their age.
Our holistic approach ensures that as well as achieving academic success, children leave Lodge Lane with a high level of personal development and social and emotional skills.
Please click on the links below to get a closer look at our curriculum across the academic year
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