Phone: 01229 462729 | Email: office@dsmprimary.com
At Dalton St Mary's we provide a broad and balanced curriculum that is relevant to our children's needs and interests.
Our curriculum provides the children at Dalton St Mary’s with a broad, balanced and relevant experience. A cross-curricular planning approach has been developed to ensure the curriculum remains dynamic whilst providing coverage of all subjects.
The curriculum is carefully planned and monitored to include the formal programme of learning including Early Years and National Curriculum but also the informal programme; lunchtime and after-school clubs, extra-curricular activities and the important features which define the school ethos and values.
Parents are provided with a Curriculum Newsletter at the beginning of each term to inform them of learning planned for the term. As always, parents are welcome to discuss any aspect of the curriculum here at Dalton St Mary’s with the Head Teacher or with individual class teachers.
At Dalton St Mary’s our SEND budget is distributed according to the needs of the children. Support staff and resources are allocated appropriately and this varies each year. If specialist equipment or resources are needed these will be purchased using money from the SEND budget.
The SENCO liaises with the Headteacher regarding staffing in relation to SEND and this is monitored regularly to ensure that effective support is provided across the school for those children who need it most.
Here at DSM there are many support staff who may provide additional support to children who need it. Our staff are highly skilled, they receive regular training and are expertly led by our SENCO (Mrs Pearson).
If it is necessary and agreed with parents school may seek the the advice of an external SEN specialist who will provide advice and support for learning and teaching.
At DSM, most children’s individual needs are met through differentiated teaching activities within the classroom.
Some children need additional support to help them access the curriculum and this may be done with the support of a Teaching Assistant who works alongside a child in the classroom or utilising appropriate resources to support learning. All learning activities which are planned by the class teachers are suitably challenging for all children and take into account their varying abilities and needs.
Children may also work in different groups which are supported by the class teacher or Teaching Assistant, have specific 1:1 sessions, work with a partner in class or in mixed ability groups.
Visual timetables and prompts are used in some classrooms and interactive displays are put up to support individual children’s visual and auditory needs.
We are committed to having a balanced and fair curriculum. We believe that our pupils should be exposed to ideas and concepts that may challenge their understanding to help ensure that pupils learn to become more accepting and inclusive of others. Challenging and controversial concepts will be delivered in a way that prevents discrimination and instead promotes inclusive attitudes.
We will also respect the right of parents to withdraw their children from classes which pose conflicts to their own beliefs. The equality duty supports good education and improves pupil outcomes. It helps us as a school to identify priorities such as underperformance, poor progression and bullying. It does this by requiring us to collate evidence, take a look at the issues and consider taking action to improve the experience of different groups of pupils. It then helps us to focus on what can be done to tackle these issues and to improve outcomes by developing measurable equality objectives.
At Dalton St Mary’s Primary School we have rigorous systems for monitoring educational standards and challenging any underperformance; our responsibility in this equality duty is scheduled as part of this rigorous process.
The children of Dalton St Mary’s School may need to stay at home due to local, regional or national restrictions. They may also need to stay at home because they are individually isolating or their class bubble has had to close.
We endeavour to teach a broad and balanced curriculum as we would do in school, although some aspects of teaching and learning will be adapted where access to certain resources or equipment is not possible.
Please follow the link to learn more about the Remote Learning Provision at DSM
The Early Years Curriculum provides for children of Nursery and Reception age in what is called the Foundation Stage. We hope to encourage the development of happy, confident, independent and caring children.
The Early Years Curriculum is very carefully planned using the Early Learning Goals, consisting of language-based, mathematical, personal and social, creative and physically-based activities. The children also develop knowledge and understanding of their world. The curriculum is taught through topics and is delivered through high quality indoor and outdoor provision.
Children enter Reception at the beginning of the academic year in which they celebrate their fifth birthday (an Admissions policy can be found on our website). Most children have already attended our Nursery, situated in the school grounds, prior to starting school.
We are fully committed to preparing children for their schooling by offering several opportunities for children and parents to visit prior to admission.
At Dalton Saint Mary’s, we believe that literacy skills are fundamental to all our children’s learning in other subjects. We therefore aim to teach these skills, following the requirements set out in the National Curriculum, and then use them in context throughout the curriculum. This cross-curricular approach is used wherever practicable and makes learning relevant and fun.
Reading is one of the most important skills for life. At Dalton Saint Mary’s, we aim to produce children who are confident in their practical reading skills and who understand that there is pleasure to be had from the written word. This pleasure begins before school age, through story-telling and looking at picture-books. In our Foundation Stage, we develop their pre-reading skills and, when they are ready, begin the long process of becoming a fluent reader.
Parents are encouraged to be involved with their child’s learning: children take reading books home daily for their parents to share and support their child’s reading development. As children’s skills and concentration develop, they are encouraged to choose and read their own books from our extensive range at school or bring them in from home.
Daily reading is an important part of the school day and independent research is used in cross-curricular topics. Children develop good literacy skills as an extension of their verbal skills. Throughout their primary education, there is an emphasis on becoming good listeners and confident speakers, increasing their spoken vocabulary through activities such as role-play, drama, discussion and group interaction.
Writing begins by learning to communicate their thoughts and ideas and develops into an advanced creative skill. Improving writing, especially grammar and punctuation, has been a focus this year, and we use Ros Wilson’s ‘Big Writing’ approach to motivate children to enjoy writing and to identify individual targets for improvement. This is already proving a success and will continue in the future. Children are taught and then encouraged to write neatly, with correct letter-formation and joined, flowing handwriting.
Young children are taught spelling using ‘Letters and Sounds’ to ensure a good understanding of phonics. They also learn to recognise and spell ‘High Frequency’ words (such as ‘the’ and ‘said’) which cannot easily be decoded using phonic rules. Spelling continues to be taught throughout Key Stage 2, mostly using spelling patterns and identifying common letter-strings. The children then extend their written vocabulary with spelling and other word-level activities.
We have several different Reading Scheme books in KS1 as we feel one approach does not suit all children. We have books from the following schemes:
Collin’s Big Cat; Discovery World; Ginn; Heinemann Story Worlds; Ladybird; Orchard Crunchies.
Computers are a valuable tool in the teaching of Literacy skills. They also enable children to present their work in a way that gives them a pride in what they have produced and to access almost unlimited (filtered!) information. ICT plays a big part in the lives of young people today and we aim to equip children with the skills they will need as citizens of the 21st century.