Our trust wide curriculum in the Cabot Learning Federation means we recognise our share aim: Enabling children to understand their place in the world, which they exploit because of a developed sense of self and agency that is built on an ability to seek meaning and make connections based on evolving understanding secured through a foundation of knowledge and skills.
Within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) provision the curriculum is carefully structured to provide opportunities for children to learn through a range of rich, meaningful first-hand experiences.
These are purposefully planned in all areas of learning and development in the indoor and outdoor environment using play as the learning vehicle. Some learning is led by adults and some by the children themselves. Appropriate intervention by practitioners supports children to engage in the learning process and extend their learning. There will be an expectation that high-quality interactions between adults and children will be the central feature of pedagogy in the early years.
Our curriculum enables children to learn and develop skills, attitudes and understanding in these areas of learning:
The curriculum enactment for KS1 & KS2 will ensure that all the subject disciplines are taught, with a priority to ensure pupils are secure in their personal, social, health and economic understanding, their reading, writing and mathematics.
Reading is a key strand of the Cabot Learning Federation 2-19 Curriculum. The school will foster a love of reading – for children to listen to stories and read these themselves. It will be key that children decipher the written code in texts of varying length and complexity; they will take meaning from the texts they read; they will read with fluency, intonation and at an appropriate pace. The opportunities will ensure that reading is informative and pleasurable. Reading will support all children to make more sense of the world that surrounds them as it broadens their knowledge, widens their vocabulary and ignites their imagination.
To support our children’s development of their reading skills, the school has elected to teach phonics using Unlocking Letters & Sounds. The teaching team also draw upon a range of resources to meet the needs of our learners to ensure they can begin and further develop their skills to read words.
Skilled word-reading involves working out the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and recognising familiar printed words. Underpinning both of these is the understanding that letters represent the sounds in spoken words. Fluent decoding supports pupils’ comprehension, because they do not have to devote mental energy to individual words. A good grasp of phonics is also important for spelling, contributing to fluency and confidence in writing. Unlocking Letters and Sounds sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven. Unlocking Letters and sounds sessions take place in reception, and in Year 1 and Year 2 (when those year groups are active in school) .
The school has elected to support the teaching of reading using a range of books from well-known authors, both fiction and non-fiction, these books form our APA Reading Spine. In addition, a range of text types from a DfE validated reading programme ensures pupils have access to appropriate levelled texts for home and class reading.
The school recognises the key principles identified in the government’s 2025 Writing Framework:
The teaching of writing at Airfield Primary Academy will establish the audience and purpose for writing as a key starting point. Once an audience and purpose are understood, pupils learn to structure their writing—moving from sentences to paragraphs and shaping the whole text intentionally. This is supported by sentence-level instruction within real writing. Composition of writing will feature oral rehearsal. Throughout the sequences of writing lessons, there will be discrete lessons, daily, to develop automaticity in handwriting, and spelling, so as to free up capacity for composing meaningfully. A key feature of the writing process is crafting and using feedback to refine and improve their writing outcomes.
In the early years, we will begin with mark-marking, and oral rehearsal before we discretely teach transcription skills. Oral rehearsal will maintain a prominent feature of the early years writing process, alongside co-creating shared stories and information, through expert modelling. Children will have opportunities to write in their play within a stimulating environment with provocations, as well as through discrete explicit instruction. As children progress through the school in Key Stage 1 and 2, teaching and learning will align to the CLF primary writing curriculum as it meets the needs of children.
Children will begin their mathematical journey through play-based learning and purposeful exploration of shape and number. They will explore a wide range of representations and manipulatives, making connections, which will enhance their understanding. They will recognise how their mathematical skills can help them in the real world. Every maths lesson will be an opportunity to build on my previous knowledge in small steps, using what they already know to make links to new learning. They will enjoy working collaboratively and understand that there is more than one way to find an answer. The will learn to use rich mathematical vocabulary to explore and explain my thinking and work systematically to find patterns. They will learn to use efficient methods and develop fluency in number facts and my conceptual understanding in tandem because each supports the development of the other.
Mathematics will be taught discretely and applied through the curriculum. The opportunities for mathematical teaching and learning will be daily. In the early years, discrete teaching will model key knowledge and thinking. Crucially, mathematical concepts will be brought to life through playful learning, high engagement from children in the environment that surrounds them, both independently and alongside high-quality interactions with their adults. As children progress through the school in Key Stage 1 and 2, teaching and learning will align to the CLF primary mathematics curriculum as it meets the needs of children.
In Key Stage 1 and 2, children will be taught subject disciplines and recognise be inspired to be successful artists, sportspersons, mathematicians, authors, readers, linguists, scientists, historians, geographers and designers, computer scientists, musicians, citizens. The organisation of the curriculum and daily enactment will timetable subjects each day across the week with subjects outside discrete reading, writing and mathematics lessons, typically being taught weekly across a 39-week school year. The CLF primary curriculum provides detail on the key substantive and disciplinary concepts for each year group.
A feature of the personal development programme will be the assembly plan, which will provide a range of value and curriculum led assemblies each day. Stories from religions, known fables, tradition stories from cultures, thematic assemblies around the work of charities and organisations, safety and diversity, equalities and inclusion and belonging e.g. No Outsiders, will be used as contexts to teach children and develop them as positive citizens.
The personal development programme will identify a range of experiences linked directly and indirectly to the subject curriculum. As the school grows, there will be a wider offer of ‘whole school’ enrichment and personal development, particularly offering opportunities for pupils across year groups to connect and learn with each other through play, mentoring and learning exchanges as classes. In the opening year, the personal development programme will identify opportunities for enrichment in each term and year group that will be intended to enhance the cultural capital, strengthen the conceptual understanding and knowledge and skills children have.
