Intent

At Radcliffe-On-Trent Infant and Nursery School we aim for our children to learn, grow and achieve together through our rainbow values which are at the core of everything we do. These values are heavily influenced by the work of Prof. Guy Claxton and John Hattie with the intention that children and staff have a shared language for learning, for the children to develop their understanding of helping themselves become better learners and to nurture a growth mind-set. Through our values it is also our intention that we educate our children to grow as individuals by caring for each other, their community and all living things as well as gain an understanding of democracy, diversity and inclusivity. Language and communication are at the centre of our curriculum. We intend to build a culture where reading for pleasure is valued across our curriculum and inspire a love of life long reading. Our curriculum has been designed with the ambition to encourage learners to develop their own curiosity as a starting point for learning and help them consider the active roles they will play in shaping the future. We then look to share our achievements together with each other, our grown-ups, governors and local community.

Principles underpinning our curriculum

We ensure our curriculum is ambitious for all and provides our children the skills and knowledge for life-long learning because:

• Our children’s mental health and wellbeing is paramount. We look to nurture a sense of belonging and build positive relationships.
• We meet fully the expectations of the National Curriculum, EYFS framework and other statutory guidance such as the RE syllabus and ensure all children are taught a full range of subjects.
• Through Read, Write Inc. and White Rose schemes we have the key skills of English and Maths at our core.
• Teachers plan and deliver a wide range of content and experiences within each subject with an effective level of challenge, to develop each child’s interests and cultural capital inside the classroom and beyond. 
• In our outdoor and indoor environments, we encourage independent, enquiry based learning where children are able to explore and take risks and where play is valued.
• We incorporate a range of teaching for memory strategies to ensure what is taught is retained.
• Our teachers work diligently as subject leaders to ensure progression of learning across subjects throughout school from Nursery to Year 2 and work closely with Radcliffe On Trent Junior School subject leaders to aid with our children’s transition to Key stage 2
• We are inclusive for all and have high expectations for all our children regardless of their starting point by providing quality first teaching, identifying and meeting individual learning and emotional needs and providing support for children and their families when required.

Implementation

Our planning for each subject includes a rich body of knowledge, both substantive knowledge (the factual knowledge for the subject) and disciplinary knowledge (the action taken within a subject to gain knowledge e.g. using evidence in history, conducting experiments in science) that we highlight through our Rainbow values.

Our ‘spiral’ topic-based approach to the curriculum helps create meaningful links between subjects through a common theme and is built around the principle of greater learner involvement which is then returned to in a different context the following year. It is a way of organising a series of broad and balanced lessons which meets National Curriculum requirements whilst capturing the interests of the children and enabling them to make links to previous learning. In addition to subject specific lessons, we ensure links are made across foundation subjects over half a term topics through a range of meaningful experiences including topic related trips, visitors to school, whole school activities,performances, homework challenges and competitions. Our lessons are clearly sequenced, building towards end points in each subject in each year group and at the end of the topic the children are then given the task of demonstrating what they have learnt. They do this by answering the questions they have met throughout the topic in the form of a ‘review’ activity, which may include a class book, assembly or presentation.

Through all of our learning are our eight Rainbow Values:

Our Rainbow Values form the basis of each lesson: