Low threshold, high ceiling – this is the guiding principle behind our curriculum .
Every child at our school learns core knowledge, with nothing left to chance, across every area of the National Curriculum and Early Years Foundation Stage . Equally, our curriculum is designed full of opportunities for extension, challenge and deep thinking.
Our low threshold, high ceiling approach, ensures that pupils will leave EP with a treasury of primary school memories and broad, deep rooted curriculum knowledge.
They will:
Our curriculum is designed so that pupils will leave EP with a treasury of primary school memories and broad, deep rooted curriculum knowledge.
All of this begins in EYFS, which is the foundation.
To achieved this we have a shared approach to Teaching and Learning
We have sequenced learning in each subject so that every child at Eleanor Palmer builds knowledge lesson on lesson, term on term and year on year until they leave us at the end of Year 6. Our Subject Verticals show how this progression of knowledge is planned and how connections are made.
Our topic approach means that classes study one subject-based topic more deeply for a term, building diverse cultural capital and an impressive body of knowledge. Three termly topics are geography-based, history-based or science-based, and include enriching visits and visitors. For example, Year 4 has a history-based topic in the Autumn: Romans in Britain. Our Topic Map gives an overview.
For each topic, we share key concepts and knowledge with the children in knowledge organisers . To ensure the children remember what they have been taught and make connections with prior learning, we have regular low-stakes quizzes based on these.
We have a strong commitment to ensuring children create and innovate, and engage with their world. We aim to make every child’s learning vivid, real, engaging and memorable, providing challenges that encourage their development in all areas.
Our children tell us year after year that this is how they love learning and when they come back to visit us as teenagers and young adults (and they frequently do!) we have proof that this approach has made them life-long learners. We have over 1,000 pages on our website capturing our rich and engaging curriculum over several years. Here are links to examples of work in each subject:
