Dimensions
Our school works hard to understand the issues and experiences that impact on the learning needs of our, unique, pupils. We use the Dimensions "Learning Means the World" curriculum in a cross curricular way as a basis to deliver a curriculum that is exciting, immersive and challenging, with a view to mitigating the impact of issues and building on positive experiences. Our curriculum follows the National Curriculum, which can be viewed here. By doing this our aim is that we will be empowering pupils' hearts as well as their minds.
This curriculum is underpinned by four, highly relevant, world issues, known as the four Cs:-
- CULTURE
- COMMUNICATION
- CONFLICT
- CONSERVATION
Communication
We believe that communication is a vital life skill and that language is the key to learning. We know the challenges faced by our community and that these challenges may sometimes impact on the experiences that our pupils have before entering our school and during their educational lives. However, we are committed to ensuring that all of our pupils become good communicators in order that they achieve long-term success. We aim to give them solid foundations in reading, writing and speaking and listening as we believe these are necessary tools in order to fully access the broader curriculum.
Our curriculum provides lots of opportunities for pupils to develop their language and vocabulary, thus enabling them to articulate learning, express their thinking and opinions clearly in discussion, debate and present as well as collaborate and exchange ideas.
Our vision is that all of our pupils move on to their next stage of education as thoughtful, effective and considerate communicators, learning to take account of the context, audience and setting that they are communicating within.
Culture
We are acutely aware of the experiences and the demographic within which our school is situated and how this impacts on the experiences that our children have. Our curriculum aims to break down barriers and ensure our pupils fully appreciate and embrace cultural diversity, learning about and experiencing a range of different cultures.
With a climate of openness and acceptance, we want our pupils to value diversity, understand the roots and importance of cultural heritage and to behave in a respectful and tolerant way towards others, regardless of faith, ethnicity or background.
We actively and explicitly promote cross-cultural friendship, respect, tolerance and understanding in this core area of our curriculum.
Conflict
At Felmore, we believe that an understanding of responsible, respectful behaviour is an important aspect of learning.
Having developed an understanding of sources of and reasons for conflict, alongside the importance of seeing things from others' points of view, we believe that our curriculum will help pupils make a difference to their own choices as they progress their learning in conflict resolution.
We want our pupils to be able to keep things in proportion, without seeing conflict as a means to an end and to have a real awareness of how their behaviour affects others. Our aim is for our pupils to understand the importance of and develop positive relationships throughout their lives. Our pupils will also have the ability to put into action conflict resolution and be able to modify their own behaviours to help them disagree in a constructive manner. We also want them to learn how to deal well with internal conflict and, thus, promote positive mental health.
Conservation
Our world is not disposable. We are committed to empowering our pupils with this knowledge. By developing a greater level of responsibility towards the environment and by teaching our pupils about the need to care for the world by looking after things, we will provide them with a structured approach to growing their own awareness and appreciation of local, national and global sustainability.
Our vision is for our pupils to be much well informed of conservation issues, to care passionately about our world and to engage actively as agents of change for good both now and in the future.
Theme coverage
Learning themes are organised into the year groups as follows:
Explorers- EYFS
Pathfinders - Year 1 and Year 2
Adventurers - Year 3 and Year 4
Navigators - Year 5 and Year 6
These documents help you to see how the national curriculum is covered at Felmore.