Subject Information

Our art curriculum has knowledge and creativity at its core, with the aim of providing all pupils with high-quality teaching that inspires and challenges them. We develop our pupils’ cultural capital through a sequenced education that exposes them to a wide range of contemporary and historical artists from around the world. By developing their understanding of the formal elements of art (colour, line, pattern, texture, shape/form and tone) we develop children’s ability to reflect on, evaluate and analyse art.

At Charles Darwin, pupils build a repertoire of artistic skills through experimentation with a variety of materials, tools, mediums and techniques. Children are encouraged to express their inner artist and creativity in an inclusive and enabling environment that supports their personal development. As one of the few subjects where there are no wrong answers, art provides invaluable opportunities for independent exploration and self-expression, helping our learners to become resilient, confident and reflective.

Here at Charles Darwin, our computing curriculum develops thinkers and creators of the future through a modern, ambitious, effective and knowledge-rich education. We encourage pupils to become active, engaged and creative thinkers in the digital world. Our focus is ensuring pupils receive high-quality lessons that include information technology, digital literacy (including e-safety) and computer science. Our ambitious, sequenced curriculum ensures children become familiar with computers and searching the internet, as well as being able to code using a range of sources. As a school, we give pupils the opportunity to develop skills and apply their knowledge across the wider curriculum to ensure that pupils are receiving a wide range of creative outlets for computing.

At Charles Darwin, Design & Technology is not taught as a discrete subject, but opportunities for designing, making and evaluating are integrated into the wider curriculum. This promotes our pupils’ DT-specific knowledge and skills while enriching other subjects and supporting the children’s personal and social development.

Our aim is to provide opportunities for pupils to develop creative, practical problem-solving skills through engaging in DT projects. They become familiar with using a range of materials and techniques and are encouraged to reflect on and evaluate their ideas and the products they create.

Through Design & Technology projects, our pupils develop a range of creative, practical problem-solving skills, enabling them to work as individuals or as members of a team.

In Early Years and KS1, we teach children to read using the Read Write Inc. phonics programme. Through half-termly assessments, we ensure our children receive targeted teaching and make rapid progress.

All children engage with a wide range of literature and poetry. Our core canon focuses on high-quality literature, including Shakespeare, Greek myths and classic texts. Our carefully planned sequence ensures children encounter a range of themes, narrative perspectives, structures, cultures and historical contexts. Our core literature texts are used for rich discussions, analytical writing and as a basis for extended writing.

This is supplemented by additional texts to broaden children’s exposure to a range of text types and provide our pupils with a wealth of cultural capital. Reading for pleasure is included daily in the timetable, alongside weekly library visits, which enrich our children with a love of reading. In addition, our children are directly taught grammar, handwriting and spelling.

At Charles Darwin, our geography curriculum provides all pupils with an understanding of their place in the world. We place a strong emphasis on the importance of learning new vocabulary, in order to help obtain new knowledge and raise the cultural capital of our learners.

The knowledge-rich curriculum is designed to introduce key human and physical geographic concepts as soon as pupils join us in EYFS. These concepts will be revisited every year, and previous learning is consolidated and expanded upon in new contexts. The subject-specific knowledge and understanding that pupils develop ensure that they are perfectly prepared to continue their studies when they move to the next stage of their education.

The passion instilled in the students through our curriculum produces exceptional outcomes. Pupils have the confidence to independently consider solutions to key geographical issues in both the local community and wider global contexts.

At Charles Darwin, we provide an inclusive history curriculum that builds on our students' understanding of British history and world history, encouraging the recognition of important local history and building an appreciation for historical events from a variety of cultures and perspectives.

We support our learners by providing them with the building blocks they need to access more abstract and complex topics, using our knowledge-rich, reading-rich and writing-rich curriculum. Our history curriculum teaches pupils key vocabulary and concepts that are regularly revisited through the curriculum. History begins in EYFS in the form of Core Knowledge where we embed a love of learning about the past. In KS1, there is a focus on more recent history and embedding the concept of time. Our sequenced curriculum ensures that pupils gain a broad knowledge base, building on their previous knowledge to develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of historical concepts and topics.

At Charles Darwin, our intention is for all pupils to leave as inquisitive, resilient and explorative mathematicians, with deep number sense, fluency in number facts and strategies for reasoning and problem-solving. We ensure children are secure in their understanding of maths to enable them to approach problems in a creative way that is clear and understandable for them.

Children are encouraged to verbalise their understanding, articulate their reasoning and to challenge themselves and others while valuing different approaches. We believe it is vital that children are resilient towards maths, and appreciate the importance of growing their mathematical understanding.

We follow ‘Maths - No Problem’. This is a maths programme developed to aid children’s understanding of different mathematical concepts in a progressive manner. There are 4 main components to a lesson:

Exploration - the class looks at a problem together, with opportunities to explore resources and methods individually or within small groups.

Structured discussion - a teacher-led whole class discussion featuring targeted questions, discussing different methods and identifying any misconceptions to rectify.

Practice - featuring both guided practice and independent practice in workbooks.

Journaling & problem solving - journaling provides children with questions or tasks based on the day’s learning. It allows them to explore new ideas, articulate their ideas and explicate their mathematical thinking that surfaced during the exploration component.

We also use both Times Table Rock Stars and Sumdog to support children’s learning.

At Charles Darwin, we provide our children with the opportunity to speak a modern foreign language - French. There are multiple benefits to learning a new language and our children gain a greater understanding of different cultures, building on our school’s diversity. We are fortunate to be able to work alongside Language Specialists that work hard to provide a curriculum that encourages pupils to learn and move forward in their language learning through speaking, listening, reading and writing. Our curriculum includes phonics, vocabulary and grammar.

The aim of our MFL curriculum is to allow children to have an understanding of French with a particular emphasis on conversational language. Alongside learning the language, there is a key focus on the cultural aspect of another country including celebrating festivals and holding educational events. We also promote the use of French beyond the discrete weekly lesson.

Here at Charles Darwin, we recognise the value of high-quality music education, not only in class but also with our extracurricular ensembles held during lunchtime clubs and electives. Our aim is to nurture a school of avid musicians and help them experience live ensemble performances in a range of exciting settings. We believe that the chance to sing, play, and be part of ensembles, is a transformational experience. It builds confidence, wide cultural knowledge, self-discipline, team spirit and a wonderful sense of well-being. It is also incredibly fun.

Our goal is to be able to offer pupils a wide range of musical experiences. So, in addition to our curriculum lessons and ensembles, we also offer (for a fee), extremely popular instrumental tuition. These sessions are led by highly skilled instrumental teachers that again give pupils even more opportunities to learn and perform.

At Charles Darwin, we strive to create a culture which inspires an active generation who feel confident and competent with PE, School Sports and Physical Activities (PESSPA). We achieve exceptional outcomes through a safe and supportive environment, allowing children to flourish and progress in their physical, cognitive, social, creative, personal, and healthy development. We offer an engaging and dynamic program of activity to ensure that all children make physical progress through an inspirational, unique and fully inclusive PE curriculum.

All pupils have the opportunity to enjoy being physically active and maintain a healthy lifestyle to increase their self-esteem. We aspire for children to adopt an athlete mentality, to believe that anything can be achieved with a positive mindset and resilience.

We also offer a wide range of external competitions through our cooperation with the Norwich School Sports Partnership and inter-Trust Primary School Championship, as well as inter-house competitions, including our Sports Day.

Our sequenced PSHE curriculum builds an understanding of a range of topics, at an age-appropriate level. We value our culture of providing a safe environment for discussion and the development of an individual worldview. Our curriculum uses resources from the PSHE Association, as well as tailored lessons produced by the school to promote well-being and emotional literacy in our students. This encourages social and personal growth, beyond their academic achievements, but still in line with our core values.

Topics covered include emotions, safety, money and health. We are also a UNICEF Rights Respecting school. This means that we embed an ethos of respect, ensuring that all students have an understanding of their own rights and those of others. This understanding goes beyond the school gates, into the wider community that the school serves.

RSHE stands for Relationships, Sex and Health Education and at Charles Darwin we believe it is important to teach our children the skills to be confident and independent individuals to help them succeed in their futures. This is a statutory part of the curriculum, as defined by the government.

The aims of RSHE at our school are to:

• Provide a framework in which sensitive discussions can take place
• Prepare pupils for puberty, and give them an understanding of sexual development and the importance of health and hygiene
• Help pupils develop feelings of self-respect, confidence and empathy
• Create a positive culture around issues of sexuality and relationships
• Teach pupils the correct vocabulary to describe themselves and their bodies

We use the Educator Solutions package which is recommended by Norfolk County Council. 

The themes explored across the school can be seen below:

Reception

• Families and people who care for me

• Caring friendships

• Respectful relationships

• Online relationships – including Internet safety

• My body

• Mental wellbeing

• Healthy eating

• Basic first aid

Year 1

• Families and people who care for me

• Caring friendships

• Respectful relationships

• Online relationships – including Internet safety

• My body

• Mental wellbeing

• Healthy eating

• Basic first aid

Year 2

• Families and people who care for me

• Caring friendships

• Respectful relationships

• Online relationships – including Internet safety

• My body

• Mental wellbeing

• Healthy eating

• Basic first aid

Year 3

• Families and people who care for me

• Caring friendships

• Respectful relationships

• Online relationships – including Internet safety

• My body

• Physical health and fitness

• Mental wellbeing

• Drugs, alcohol and tobacco

• Health and prevention

• Basic first aid

Year 4

• Families and people who care for me

• Caring friendships

• Respectful relationships

• Online relationships – including Internet safety

• Changing adolescent body

• Mental wellbeing

• Healthy eating

• Drugs, alcohol and tobacco

• Health and prevention

• Basic first aid

Year 5

• Families and people who care for me

• Caring friendships

• Respectful relationships

• Online relationships – including Internet safety

• Changing adolescent body

• Physical heath and fitness

• Mental wellbeing

• Drugs, alcohol and tobacco

• Health and prevention

• Basic first aid

Year 6

• Families and people who care for me

• Caring friendships

• Respectful relationships

• Online relationships – including Internet safety

• Sex and reproduction (please note this is the only lesson children are allowed to be withdrawn from)

• Mental wellbeing

• Healthy eating

• Drugs, alcohol and tobacco

• Health and prevention

• Basic first aid

Religion is so intertwined with human society that it is important to have a good understanding of religion to be part of society. The study of religion is both fascinating and vital in a world defined by global and historical patterns of religious belief.

At Charles Darwin, our curriculum covers a range of religions and worldviews. Students are equipped with knowledge of theological, philosophical and religious concepts that enable them to understand a range of religions/worldviews. They express their ideas about the nature and significance of religions/worldviews. Importantly, we explore the 'impact' of religious beliefs and narratives in areas of human life and culture such as art, music, literature and architecture, allowing pupils to interpret the religious-influenced world around them. The powerful knowledge our children gain equips them to engage seriously with religions/worldviews and navigate the complex ways that people express beliefs.

At Charles Darwin, we endeavour to inspire a new generation of learners to become confident scientists with a strong understanding of the world around them. Our ambitious, knowledge-rich science curriculum has a focus on embedding core vocabulary and encouraging all children to think scientifically, fostering their love of learning and curiosity

for the subject. We are lucky enough to have a dedicated science lab within the school where children can put their learning into practice, creating a sense of awe and wonder when they see the results of an experiment that they designed using their own knowledge of a topic.

The aim of our science curriculum here at Charles Darwin is to instil in all children the desire to contribute to the ever-expanding body of knowledge and to develop the skills to work scientifically in real-world situations that are vital to the world’s future prosperity.