How we teach:  We believe that children learn best when they feel safe, challenged and loved.

We believe that by defining ourselves as a “Loving School” and by identifying how we live this out in our daily life in school we are supporting the Church of England’s vision for education of:

• Educating for Wisdom Knowledge and Skills
• Educating for Hope and Aspiration
• Educating for Community and Living Well Together
• Educating for Dignity and Respect

For greater detail on the Church of England’s vision for Education visit the full statement here:  https://www.churchofengland.org/more/education-and-schools/vision-education

We are currently revising and revisiting our curriculum and using the research of the Education Endowment Foundation to inform our approach: 

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit

We are also influenced and interested in new pedagogical approaches and are developing quality first teaching by studying Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction and developing our teaching through a coaching and action research approach alongside our colleagues in other schools. 

You can find out more about Rosenshine's Principles here:

https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/early-career-teachers/0/steps/164331

As a school we have studied the work of Carole Dweck and her thinking and research around the importance of developing a growth mind-set.

https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve

We have shared this with parents and pupils and staff regularly revisit growth mind-set language and approaches. We believe that we cannot all be the best but we can all be our best. Rather than say “I can’t do it” we encourage children to say “I can’t do it yet.” This is a subtle but powerful difference and it is starting to make a positive difference to the resilience and performance of pupils.

To support this thinking we are also inspired by the work of Brene Brown and her research around vulnerability and asking for help. Recognising ourselves as “worth the effort.”

https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability

We are also influenced by the thinking of educationalists such as Rita Pearson: https://www.ted.com/talks/rita_pierson_every_kid_needs_a_champion

and Sir Ken Robinson:  https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity

https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution#t-265375

As a result of this work we have developed our “Loving School” value which underpins all that we do in school. As a church of England school we believe that everyone is unique and miraculous creation of a loving God. No two people are the same and we recognise this in our approach. Every child is a moment in history, a new learning experience for our staff. Difference and diversity is celebrated through our weekly VIP programme that acknowledges who we are and who we aspire to be. We support children through the use of Emotional Literacy support assistants as well as subscribing to the “Thrive” approach to resilience and behaviour management.

Our vision statement is:  “Growing in the Forest”

This describes several forms of “growth”

• Physical growth
• Growing in wisdom and knowledge
• Spiritual growth
• Growing community

By using our guidance for outstanding provision, our loving school ethos and the national curriculum we aspire to create the most effective curriculum to meet the needs of our children. We do this by rigorously planning, reviewing and reflecting on what we teach and how we teach it. We want our pupils to know how to learn and to present their learning in exciting and innovative ways and we want them to take their learning home and extend it through use of their cloud based Google Drive and home learning projects with parents. We aim to keep parents fully informed and help them to understand how they can work in partnership with us to bring about the best outcomes for each pupil. This is what we are here for and it serves everyone well if pupils succeed and move on to secondary school as confident, resilient, articulate learners who are well balanced and rounded people with a sense of social and moral responsibility.

And so we finish where we began. This is what we want our pupils to be when they leave us:

Much of the learning at Bransgore Primary School is based upon our new enquiry based curriculum which we are developing in response to changes in the national curriculum. To develop our revised curriculum, we asked ourselves, what does a child need to be able to do and what qualities should they display if they are to be successful as they move to secondary school and further on into the world of work? As a staff, parents, governors and pupils we came up with the following ideas which we have represented as a Wordle. The larger the word, the more often it was used.

We next asked ourselves, if these are the qualities we want our pupils to possess as learners, how can we provide a curriculum which helps them to develop these attributes? From this discussion has emerged our Bransgore Curriculum. This curriculum is based upon our view of what makes outstanding provision. We have a new 2 year rolling programme of enquiry based learning which will evolve term by term, improving and refining as we go. Our document outlining the elements we feel contribute to outstanding provision is here: 

Home - Learning Projects:

An important new development are our home learning projects. As well as basic reinforcement and consolidation work at home, we would like children to get creative with our half-termly home learning projects. Pupils can choose to present their learning about a theme in a dynamic way. The hope is that parents, extended family or friends might get involved too. Build a model, make a poster, create a powerpoint, write a poem or booklet or even bake a cake!

Parents — how you can be involved:

• Look at parent’s information letter from phase leaders

• Supply resources from home and support home learning projects

• Respond to requests for help

• Talk to the children about their work

• Remember that children should enjoy learning

• Celebrate the exit point with your child at the end of each unit. Invitations will be sent offering the opportunity to visit the classroom

• Here is a useful resource provided by Rising Stars called a Parent's Guide to the New Curriculum:

The Complete Guide to the New Curriculum  

Reporting your child's progress:

Our termly reports detail the progress your child is currently making towards the national standard for their age in reading, writing and mathematics. We also include an attendance, effort and behaviour grade enabling you to form a more rounded picture of your child’s development. The guidance for this can be found here.

What we teach:

At Bransgore we teach our thematic learning using a two year rolling programme:

Theme Overview - Year A

Theme Overview - Year B

To view how specific topics are taught you can scroll down the page:

National Curriculum coverage by Year Group:

Source: Michael Tidd 2013

Bransgore Curriculum coverage by Subject:

National Curriculum coverage by Subject: