Our Curriculum

Overview of our School Curriculum

At Holmes Chapel Primary School our curriculum is designed to inspire and challenge all learners, preparing them for life and making it purposeful and relevant to our modern world.

Our curriculum ensures that children gain knowledge and skills at every stage of their time at our school, and builds on previous learning. It is a curriculum that empowers our pupils to know more, remember more and be able to do more. It is designed to be broad and balanced, encompassing academic, creative, social, emotional, physical and cultural opportunities for development. We aim to connect learning to our local environment, engaging pupils with their world and enriching their life experiences. Our lessons support all pupils to learn and progress, supporting and understanding individual’s particular strengths and needs.

This year, as part of our school development plan, we are continuing to work towards ensuring that the implementation of our curriculum is having its intended impact on outcomes for our pupils through clearly defined end points for all curriculum areas. We are also developing effective approaches to assessment throughout the whole school. Our approach to assessment in foundation subjects is less formal than in core subject disciplines. In all foundation subjects, there is ongoing teacher assessment to ensure that the children are keeping up with the pace of the curriculum and achieving our goals. We assess at the end of the Foundation Stage against the Early Learning Goals. In KS1 and KS2 we are tracking foundation subjects very broadly to ensure that pupils are working within the curriculum expectations for their year group.

You can find out more about the curriculum for each class by visiting each individual subject page and the year group pages.

Enriching our curriculum

We enrich our curriculum through offering a wide range of expereinces and opportunities for children throughout their school life. This year those opportunities include:-

Residential visits for children in Year 5 and Year 6
Visits to places in our local environment, including the village of Holmes Chapel, our local places of worpship, the library, the viaduct, and the Dane Valley
Visits further afield, including Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield Silk Museum, Stockport Air Raid Shelters, Macclesfield Forest, New Vic Theatre in Stoke, Crowden River Valley
Visitors to school, including local fire fighters, our Police Community Support Officer, a vet, a paramedic, representatives from local places of worship, mystery readers, reading helpers from the community
Workshops - A Viking Day, a Greek Day
Peripatetic music teachers - piano, guitar, ukelele, clarinet
Allotments - an opportunity to engage in learning about planting, growing and harvesting a range of fruit, vegetables and herbs
After school clubs including singing, coding, cooking, craft, sicence, a range of sports
Whole school events including Children in Need, Safer Internet Day, World Book Day, Down's Syndrome Day, Children's Mental Health Week, British Science Week, Red Nose Day
Performances - Key Stage 1 and Reception at Christmas, Years 3-5 Performances to Parents, and Year 6 Leavers performance
Music opportunities - Young Voices concert at the arena in Manchester, Wider Opportunities performance with the Halle Orchestra at The Bridgewater Hall
Sports competitions and tournaments with other primary schools in our cluster, hosted and organised by our local high school