We are committed to working in partnership with parents/carers and the wider community to provide an inspiring, stimulating and caring environment for our children. This will enable them to take the next steps in their lives confidently and successfully when they leave Glapton Academy.
Our job is to Lead, Empower, Aspire and Drive our children to experience and gain these key values and experiences: Happiness, Friendship, Discovery, Inspiration and Success and ultimately create Awesome Memories of their time here with us in the academy.
At the Glapton Academy, we believe that it is important that each child is given the opportunity to develop his/her full potential and we are continuously striving to enable our children to succeed and to provide an education of the highest quality to enable each child to be their very best when they leave us in Year 6.
Our Academy seeks to provide a rich and creative curriculum with the highest expectations for our children to attain high standards in all core skills and subject areas whilst discovering their interests and abilities in the wider curriculum and upholding core British Values.
Our school aims to provide a safe happy and caring environment where everyone is treated with respect and friendships are formed and positive memories are created.
We encourage good manners and responsibility and promote a positive attitude to learning by recognising positive behaviour, effort, high self-esteem and achievement through our consistent system of rewards.
We acknowledge the importance of developing an understanding of all main faith traditions and welcome the contribution that they can bring to our curriculum and life in our Academy.
We will enable all children to have the opportunity to participate in a daily act of simple collective worship including hymns and prayers and to experience empathy whilst understanding their part in our multi-faith society.
Opportunities will be provided to encourage children to support local charities and community projects with their time, talent and contributions promoting values such as truthfulness, honesty, generosity, selflessness and loyalty. We will forge links with local services and businesses to inspire our children and develop an understanding of the importance of a good work ethic.
Academy life will enable our children to learn the basic rules for keeping themselves healthy and safe and for behaving well. They will have opportunities to show they can take increasing responsibility for themselves and their environment and to contribute to school development.
All children will be encouraged to have a voice in school planning and our democratically elected pupil groups will meet regularly to give ideas and create action plans to support the continuous improvement of our school.
We will use every opportunity to nurture confidence and develop positive relationships using a growth mind-set approach that encourages problem solving, resilience, tolerance, brave choices and independence.
At Glapton Academy we are proud of our creative curriculum. Pupils are taught through a topic based approach. Our long term plan ensures a progressive and balanced coverage of all National Curriculum areas and RE whilst allowing for interactive and exciting teaching and learning. It also supports leaders to track the systematic development of concepts and subject knowledge.
Our Knowledge Organisers and Concept Maps ensure that we are all clear about the intentions of the content of our curriculum and leaders’ have the ability to articulate their intentions.
At each stage of learning from our youngest pupils in Nursery to our oldest in Y6 we aim to promote their learning and development to ensure they are ready for the next KS whether that is Foundation Stage 2 or KS3.
Topics change half termly and include visits or visitors to bring each topic to life. Teaching and learning is enriched by these visits and/or visitors, the use of our community and our local environment.
Children in KS2 benefit from a residential visit to allow pupils to develop high levels of independence both socially and academically.
We have planned a regular focus on different festivals to ensure that children deepen their understanding of other religions and cultures and Challenge Days to enrich our curriculum and take children to a whole new level of learning.
Our curriculum is underpinned by the core British values to ensure that equality and inclusion permeate all of our learning.
The teaching of National Curriculum science is linked to our topics and scientific investigation is further reinforced during our annual STEM week. Science is taught each week to ensure that children have access to a rich balance of scientific knowledge but also to enable them to develop fluency and unconsciously apply their knowledge as skills.
Activities during STEM week enhance independent thinking, teamwork, speaking & listening skills and investigation skills.
The teaching of pupil independence is effective by empowering pupils to develop personal responsibility and organisation skills through a consistent, structured approach to homework linked to our Learning LEAPS and a menu of a broad range of optional homework tasks.
Learning opportunities are enriched through our Challenge Days and weeks which enable pupils to use their life skills, initiative and understanding, for example, through developing business enterprise opportunities in our Enterprise Day where pupils will be set the challenge to raise profits from a budget of £1 per pupil whilst also having an enjoyable and exciting experience.
Pupils regularly perform to parents or others enhancing community links and confirming our ethos and strengthening partnerships.
Pupils take on roles of responsibility throughout the school and rise to these challenges showing excellent care and guidance for younger pupils. Roles range from Sports Organising Crews to School Nutrition Action Groups.
High quality Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural teaching as well as established policy results in pupils making healthy choices and excellent extra-curricular sporting opportunities support children to make healthy lifestyle choices.
The teaching of performing arts is prioritised to provide high profile opportunities for learners to develop competence, confidence and creativity by involvement in: performing in parent assemblies, Nativity, Christmas Concert Productions, and Y4 whole class brass lessons. Theatre groups visit school to enrich our topics and to provide opportunities to get involved in role play.
Pupils experience success through engaging with our creative curriculum and this success raises pupils’ self-esteem, self-motivation and self-confidence, impacting positively on their enjoyment of school life.
Teachers plan carefully ensuring that all children are supported to achieve the same learning objective and to work in greater depth alongside clear opportunities to communicate clearly and confidently.
All of our topics have a global dimension to ensure that children have a clear understanding of RESPECT for all and that the global community offers many incredible opportunities. We have also identified opportunities to strengthen British Values in a meaningful way linked to topics, assemblies or curriculum events.
We teach reading through a progressive approach to phonics using ‘Essential Letters and Sounds’ (ELS) scheme and the teaching of VIPERS approach to Guided Reading across all key stages.
Our reading books are colour banded and incorporate a variety of schemes closely linked to ELS.
We support our vulnerable readers with additional weekly or daily reading with a named adult.
We have regular themed days and weeks to inspire and excite our pupils and enable them to learn exceptionally well across the curriculum.
We regularly use cross curricular opportunities linked to our topics to enrich our teaching with visits, visitors and interactive teaching.
Our long term plan shows progression and coverage for each year group as well as key vocabulary to be learnt and understood for each topic.
