Key Stage 2

Our Key Stage 2 continues to build upon the firm foundations of EYFS and KS1, equipping our children with the skills and knowledge to be confident at secondary school and develop the responsibilities and experiences to be successful in life.

 

 

 

English

English is fully embedded into our E3L themes to provide a wealth of authentic and purposeful opportunities for pupils to develop their literacy skills.  In particular, there will be a range of inspirational writing opportunities interwoven into our themes.

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We have identified the main purposes for writing and organised our curriculum so that we teach text types which share similar features together. For example, the effective use of adjectives can be secured by teaching descriptive poetry and adventure stories during the same half term.

The four writing purposes that children will be taught across KS2 are: Writing to Entertain, Writing to Inform, Writing to Persuade and Writing to Discuss.

By organising the curriculum in this way, children are able to master the features of each genre much more successfully. Pupils then have multiple chances to apply their skills through the many writing opportunities embedded through the E3L themes.

Writing Purposes

In Key Stage 2 we use increasingly difficult texts in class with more focus on teaching inference and high order reading skills.

Maths

Our aim is to equip all pupils with the skills and confidence to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, to reason mathematically and have the ability to solve increasingly sophisticated problems as outlined in the 2014 National Curriculum programmes of study.

We aim to increase confidence and deepen understanding in KS2 with an emphasis on building a solid foundation for all pupils before moving on. Our curriculum is designed to allow pupils to learn concepts in greater depth (mastery approach). This means designing sequences of lessons that enable pupils to demonstrate not just that they have superficial knowledge of a concept, but that they can apply their knowledge to increasingly complex situations and can make rich links between different curriculum areas.

 

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Children’s understanding in mathematics is strengthened if they experience concrete and visual representations of a concept during a lesson. Children across Key Stage 2 will continue to use a variety of equipment such as counters, multilink, dienes equipment and number rods to help introduce new concepts (such as ratio and scaling) and to show their understanding of different concepts. They will also use a variety of visual representations such as bar models and diagrams in increasingly complex ways.

Pupils will need to be independent problem solvers when they learn. They will need to be creative and confident in presenting their reasoning and ideas to others. They will need to know where they are with their learning and what they need to do next to improve their work.

We also recognise that spending a short time every day on rapid recall of number facts, such as basic number bonds to five or ten and times table facts, quickly leads to improved fluency. This is not meaningless rote learning; rather, this is an important step to developing understanding through identifying patterns and relationships between the tables (for example, that the products in the 4× table are double the products in the 2× table).   

Science

We have a three-tiered approach to the delivery of Science.

Science knowledge is delivered through the E3L themes, some of which are specifically science focused such as ‘Scream Machine’ and ‘Stargazers’. We also have an extra emphasis on practical science through additional practical science investigations. These investigations are linked to the E3L themes and develop the skills and vocabulary they need to work independently, with an enquiry-based approach. There are 2/3 investigations per theme and these are carefully planned on a much more regular basis than most other primary schools.

We ensure coverage of the science programme of study across each year group for both the knowledge aspects of science as well as practical investigation types.

 

 

E3L Thematic Curriculum

In Key Stage 2 our themes continue to offer irresistible learning opportunities through innovative and rich experiences through our E3L curriculum.

An E3L theme lasts up to half a term, which the pupils use as the context to base their learning on. The underpinning philosophy is that they learn better in context rather than in isolation.

E3L themes cover areas of the National Curriculum, but some themes might be more geography based, while others may contain more history. By writing the curriculum in this way it allows for stronger experiences and more time to produce high-quality outcomes with more learning impact. In this way there is an opportunity for in-depth learning but with the full curriculum balance across the age phases.

 

Explore our themes

E3L themes have within them certain key activities and outcomes with many opportunities for pupils to have a real audience. For example, a large piece of extended writing, such as a piece of diary writing in the ‘Time Traveller’ theme, is shared with a global audience via an online blog. A recipe in ‘Potions’ is published and ‘sold’ to families. The theme ‘Gallery Rebels’ in year 6 allows pupils to produce a ‘real’ gallery exhibition that is ‘visited’ by families and the community.

Our Immersive Room also enables learners to visit and experience places and times in a way that they are unable to do in a standard primary school and will enhance the themes and the learning that takes place. Themes such as ‘Frozen Kingdom’, ‘Pharoah’, ‘Blue Abyss’ and ‘Child’s War’ will all benefit from them having carefully crafted lessons in this special learning space.