Moorfield Primary School Curriculum Statement
Curriculum Structure and Opportunity
Our curriculum is designed to provide rich opportunities for children to:
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Explore concepts and the world around them.
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Make connections across subjects and ideas.
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Develop knowledge and skills, with a strong foundation in literacy and reading comprehension.
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Develop concepts and ideas, enhanced by vocabulary and background knowledge gained through reading.
This is achieved through a challenging, progressive model that ensures breadth and depth across the National Curriculum, with reading proficiency underpinning access to all content.
The Golden Thread
The Golden Thread running through our curriculum is teaching and learning that is deeply rooted in and supported by reading, ensuring that every child:
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Inspires themselves and others through their engagement with diverse texts and ideas.
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Facilitates and promotes independence, primarily by equipping them with the reading skills to access information and learn autonomously.
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Develops collaboration and respect, using shared texts and reading experiences as a common ground.
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Encourages pupils to develop their strengths and interests, both mentally and physically, through the exploration of a wide range of written materials.
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Creates learners who are ready for their exciting futures, fully literate and capable of navigating an information-rich world.
Vision for the Children of Moorfield
Our vision for the children of Moorfield is to:
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Actively participate in a knowledge and skills-based curriculum which provides opportunities to be confident and inquisitive learners, with reading as the gateway to all learning.
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Be confident speakers, listeners, readers and writers by experiencing a consistent, reading-rich, and creative curriculum.
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Expand their knowledge and understanding of themselves, their community and the wider world through comprehensive engagement with diverse and challenging texts.
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Understand and respect why we are here, what has led to this place and question how we can influence the future, using reading to gain historical and global perspective.
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Develop and support their own individual physical, mental, social and emotional well-being.
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Have a healthy body, healthy mind, feel safe and create a trusting environment where every voice can be heard and valued.
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Develop their creative skills and knowledge.
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Empower themselves to explore their interests and communicate their thoughts, backed by strong vocabulary and comprehension.
Moorfield Primary School is a welcoming and inclusive school where everyone is valued and where tolerance, honesty, co-operation and mutual respect for others are fostered. Our commitment to developing the whole child is supported by ensuring every child becomes a successful, confident reader. We aspire for our children to have the skills to be resilient, independent, confident and motivated in this ever-changing world, so that they can take full advantage of all future opportunities.
Core Values
At Moorfield we have four core values at the heart of all that we do:
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RESPONSIBILITY
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PERSEVERANCE
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COMPASSION
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THANKFULNESS
Aims
We aim to:
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Provide a secure environment in which all our children can flourish and achieve all five outcomes of ‘Every Child Matters’ (be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution, and enjoy economic well-being), underpinned by a curriculum that prioritises reading success.
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Provide a learning environment where all individuals see themselves reflected and feel a sense of belonging.
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Prepare children for life in a diverse society in which children are able to see their place in the local, regional, national and international community.
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Include and value the contribution of all families to our understanding of equality and diversity, and actively challenge discrimination and disadvantage.
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Provide positive non-stereotyping information about different groups of people regardless of the 9 protected characteristics under the law (Equality Act 2010), integrated through carefully selected reading materials across the curriculum.
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Make inclusion a thread which runs through all our activities, ensuring all pupils have the resources and support to become fluent readers.
At Moorfield Primary our curriculum intent is to:
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Create and maintain an exciting, stimulating and supportive learning environment.
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Engage children through interesting lessons, units and practical activities, with texts as the stimulus and reference point.
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Facilitate children’s acquisition of knowledge, skills and understanding of a range of units, with reading proficiency being the key facilitator.
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Make meaningful links between subjects, aspects of learning and effective connections to the real world in 21st Century Britain, often through non-fiction and literary texts.
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Develop children’s capacity to work independently and collaboratively.
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Help them to develop intellectually, emotionally, socially, physically and morally.
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Cultivate successful relationships that will support their emotional well-being.
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Help children acquire a solid base for lifelong learning, built on strong reading comprehension and a love of books.
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Promote a positive attitude and inspire them to investigate, reason, think creatively and solve problems in a challenging, but supportive environment.
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Help them to develop resilience and perseverance.
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Ensure that each child’s education has flexibility, is developmental, has consistency, continuity and progression.
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Provide a learning culture which supports their self-esteem, confidence, spirituality, cultural capital and transition, significantly enhanced by exposure to rich texts.
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Enable children to contribute positively to the school and the wider community.
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Teach children to respect each other’s lifestyles, backgrounds and cultures, and value our diverse British society.
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Teach children the British Values of Democracy, Rule of Law, Respect, Tolerance and Individual Liberty, explored through relevant literature where appropriate.
At Moorfield, Reading is the Golden Thread running through our curriculum and is given the highest priority. The ability to read fluently and with deep understanding is the crucial access point for successful learning in all subject areas.
We ensure early reading success through a rigorous and systematic approach: Children in Reception, Year 1, and Year 2 follow the Systematic Synthetic Phonics Programme Essential Letters and Sounds. For Grammar and Spelling rules we utilise Essential Letters and Sounds alongside our daily English lessons.
Reading comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary acquisition are explicitly taught and assessed to unlock the wider curriculum. Our full English curriculum has been revamped, including the use of ‘Literacy Tree’, to embed a wide range of diverse and historical texts, enriching pupils’ cultural capital and knowledge base across all subjects. Each class has dedicated daily 'Reading Pathways' sessions to explicitly teach key reading skills and their associated content domains. Fluency is regularly assessed in these sessions by teachers and Teaching Assistants, ensuring pupils can read quickly and accurately enough to access complex subject material.
We cultivate a reading culture that extends beyond the classroom, recognising that reading is key to sustained learning:
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We have significantly increased the focus on reading at home, supported by our newly created ‘Reading at Home’ parental booklet and the active encouragement of daily reading practices.
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Community Engagement: The Mystery Reader initiative in Key Stage 1is highly popular, bringing parents into the classroom to share their love of reading.
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We run successful whole-school projects like the 50 Club reading initiative and the Reading River project across KS1 (recently redone and involving preschool), motivating children to read widely.
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We have hosted several author visits and trips to local bookshops, making reading an exciting, real-world experience.
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Both KS1 and KS2 libraries have been fully revamped with displays, graphic novels, reading role models, and diverse texts. These provide high-quality resources to support curriculum learning and foster independent reading choices.
The Mastery approach in Maths uses White Rose Maths and incorporates challenge through ‘Deep, Deeper and Deepest’ activities with a focus on reasoning and problem solving.
At Moorfield, PSHE Education and RSE are considered across the curriculum and are a fundamental part of the children’s school experience and are explored in other areas of the curriculum such as assemblies, themed weeks (e.g. anti-bullying week, mental health awareness) and other curriculum areas (e.g. science). We believe that successful PSHE Education and RSE supports pupils learning capacity and this aspect of the school’s work is held in high regard as we believe that it promotes wellbeing and underpins children’s development as people. To support this, we follow the 1 decision programme scheme of work, which holds the PSHE Association Quality Mark, alongside DATE Spiral Curriculum, PSHE Association and Christopher Winter’s Programme of Study.
We have carefully mapped out the required knowledge from the EYFS and National Curriculum to ensure that all aspects are fully covered. We have a progression of skills and vocabulary for all subjects, so that the children are able to build on their prior learning and know what will come next.
We believe in ‘Inspiring Creative Learners for Exciting Futures’ and our well skilled staff use their creativity to ensure that all children are fully engaged in their learning journey. At Moorfield we want to provide all children with the opportunity to develop a lifelong love of learning and provide them with essential skills for life.
Children will leave Moorfield Primary School as confident, fluent, and engaged readers, ready for the next stage in their learning at Secondary School. The curriculum will have provided a range of knowledge and skills to support them in their future learning. They will be able to work collaboratively with their peers and independently as inquisitive learners who are motivated to excel and who have a thirst for learning. The children will have a strong desire to embrace challenge and to be resilient learners. Our curriculum will also enable our pupils to become good citizens and demonstrate an appreciation for others. Our children will be respectful and will show tolerance and acceptance to those from different faiths and backgrounds.
