Elm Hall Primary School

At Elm Hall Primary School, we strive to provide a warm, accepting culture and climate in which the children can fulfil their full potential. The curriculum has been designed to meet the needs of our pupils and catchment area, focusing on the key areas of health and well-being, developing academic attitudes and promoting resilience. It has also been built on modern learning theories, how we memorise and key life-style features that promote academic success.

Curriculum Intent:

Our curriculum has been designed to build upon learning skills, build awareness of the outside world, cultures and the opportunities within it whilst promoting high standards of education.

The first building block of Elm Hall’s curriculum focuses on ‘Building the Learner’. ‘Building the learner’ acknowledges the key core skills that every learner needs in order to successfully access the rest of the curriculum elements – it is how we create pupil well-being, great learner attitudes and raise aspirations of all pupils.

At the centre of this is our wellbeing subject which underpins the skills and attitudes we want our children to develop. Wellbeing is the school’s PHSE curriculum which is a core subject. Through the six ‘Being Heathy’ aspects, we address the fact that children need to maintain healthy lifestyle choices through ‘Healthy Eating’ and developing ‘Healthy Habits’. For developing pupils who are prepared for life in modern Britain, ‘Healthy Aspirations’ addresses the fact that a lot of our children need to build knowledge of pathways into successful careers and developing a growth mindset to achieve their goals. ‘Healthy Citizenship’ teaches children how to remain safe in modern Britain and recognises the challenges they may face, particularly in our catchment area, and be able to distinguish between right and wrong. ‘Healthy Thoughts’ aims to enable children to show awareness of mindfulness, demonstrate positive body image, exude positivity and motivation, and develop resilient attitudes and tolerance towards others. ‘Healthy Relationships’ supports the children to form positive and safe relationships that will support them to be responsible, tolerant and mindful individuals. The attitudes and life skills that we aim to teach through this underpin our entire curriculum and endeavours to create children who are prepared for life in modern Britain and ready for the next stage of their learning. 

Our school ethos for ‘Visible Kindness’ and behaviour system ‘Moving on Up’ are both interwoven within the curriculum to build the learner - these recognise and reward positive behaviours, aiding the building of positive relationships, developing key attitudes and creating a warm culture where children can feel welcomed and safe.

Alongside the wellbeing curriculum, and as a response to promoting knowledge of Britain the world, a social studies curriculum has been designed as a flexible aspect of the school curriculum that can adjust to events in the news or topics in society. It aligns with the school’s assembly plan which will explore some of these aspects with the whole school.

To complement the school’s curriculum emphasis on pupil wellbeing, the ‘Elm Hall Attitudes’ of ‘Believing, Growing, Owning, Respecting and Collaborating’ are fed through all aspects of learning, and are promoted within classes throughout the day. These are explicitly taught, recognised and celebrated over the course of the academic year as the curriculum aims to be as much about character building as it is about creating academic success.

‘Building the knowledge’ represents the systems for teaching, learning and planning that ensures knowledge is learnt and retained. Repetition of Key concepts, Progression of key skills and Engaging topics (Discovery, Exploration and Creation) supports the retention of key knowledge.

‘Expressing the learning’ represents the authentic outcomes that children strive to work for. We look carefully at an individual’s needs and strive to meet these to instil confidence and a growth mindset. The curriculum utilises every minute of the school day to provide an opportunity to develop children’s social skills and wellbeing, which in turn drives and supports all children to achieve their full potential.