Curriculum | Glebefields Primary School

All of our staff are dedicated and passionate about raising standards and improving the life chances for our children. We value each and every member of our school community, treating each other with respect and encouraging all staff and children to ‘SHINE’.

Our aim is to provide our children with an engaging and empowering curriculum that equips them for life and future success. At Glebefields Primary School we enable this by providing our children with a safe, positive place where children can grow socially and academically.

Curriculum Intent

At Glebefields Primary School the breadth of our curriculum is designed based on the context of our community, and has high expectations for all learners to reach their potential, regardless of socio-economic factors.

Enrichment of language opportunities: We want all children to leave Glebefields being confident readers and talkers, who read for meaning, understand ambitious vocabulary and are able to communicate meaningfully.

Experiential Learning: We want children to have hands-on, active experiences where they learn through doing and investigating. Learning is enhanced through our provision for trips and visits for real-life experiences and extra-curricular opportunities. These engage children in current and future learning, giving them a greater understanding of the world they live in (cultural capital).

Responsible Learners: Through our School Values (Resilience, Empathy, Self-Awareness, Passion, Excellence, Communication and Teamwork), children are ‘learning to learn’ so positive attitudes to learning are established. This opens up the gateway to the breadth of possibilities and aspirations available to them and supports engagement in learning. Our curriculum allows children to build upon prior learning.

Making Informed Choices: We equip children with the confidence, knowledge and skills to allow them to make informed decisions to keep themselves happy, safe and healthy. We teach the diversity of the world our children are part of, developing responsible citizens who have respect for others. Children leave Glebefields with a sense of belonging to a closely-knit community.

Importance of Family Engagement: We recognise the positive impact that family members can have on their child’s learning. Therefore we celebrate children’s achievements with parents and encourage families to be involved in school life and events.

We want children to leave Glebefields with a sense/understanding of:

knowing right from wrong
aspirations for their futures
their own potential
being good role models who understand the law
being confident, respectful, well-rounded, happy and tolerant young people
having a strong work ethic
pride in their achievements
learning from their mistakes
the world around them – cultural capital
effective learning
dealing with conflict appropriately

PSHE & RHE

Jigsaw is a comprehensive Programme for Primary PSHE including statutory Relationships and Health Education. It is a spiral curriculum, allowing children to come build upon prior learning.

Through Jigsaw children will be:

learning experiences to help them navigate their world
developing positive relationships with themselves and others
building resilience
developing emotional literacy
nurturing mental health and physical health
learning mindfulness techniques to advance their emotional awareness, concentration and focus

Forest School

What is Forest School and why do we do it?

Forest School is a child-centred inspirational learning process, that offers opportunities for holistic growth through regular sessions. It is a long-term program that supports play, exploration and supported risk taking. It develops confidence and self-esteem through learner inspired, hands-on experiences in a natural setting.

Forest School has a developmental ethos shared by thousands of trained practitioners around the world, who are constantly developing their learning styles and skills to support new and imaginative learners. Its roots reach back to the open-air culture, friluftsliv, or free air life, seen as a way of life in Scandinavia where Forest School began. It arrived in the UK in 1993 and has grown from strength to strength since then.

The process helps and facilitates more than knowledge-gathering, it helps learners develop socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically and intellectually. It creates a safe, non-judgemental nurturing environment for learners to try stuff out and take risks. Forest School inspires a deep and meaningful connection to the world and an understanding of how a learner fits within it. Our approach to risk means that learners constantly expand on their abilities by solving real-world issues, building self-belief and resilience. We believe that risk is more than just potential for physical harm, but a more holistic thing, there are risks in everything we do, and we grow by overcoming them. Forest School therefore, helps participants to become, healthy, resilient, creative and independent learners.

There is lots of research out there to support the outcomes of Forest School, but we know that it isn’t just the educational outcomes and research that matter, our learners and leaders love it too!

Our sessions are led by Jason Hardwick, Elements Forest Schools, on a Tuesday and a Thursday each week.

Whole School Curriculum

Subject Coverage and Progression

If you wish to find out more about our curriculum at Glebefields Primary School please contact Miss Laura Bodin via office@glebefields.net.