Click here to read our Curriculum Statement.

Organisation of the Curriculum 

The curriculum is very carefully structured to ensure continuity and progression of learning throughout the school. Detailed teaching programmes are carried out in all subjects ensuring that concepts are taught, re-visited and extended over the time the children are at New Mill. All areas of the curriculum are presented as separate subjects with some being taught in discrete units and others grouped together in topics.

Click here to view the topic overview and vision for each subject area.

Literacy and Numeracy

Literacy and numeracy teaching takes place every morning and is as cross curricular as possible. There is usually teacher led, whole class work leading to differentiated group and individual tasks. A plenary session draws each lesson to a close, when the learning achieved is evaluated and any homework required is set. Targets for maths, reading and writing for each year group can be found by following the links below.

MATHS       READING        WRITING

Reading

At New Mill, we want children to develop a love of reading.  

We have a structured approach to the teaching of reading and aim to develop confident readers who enjoy a wide range of texts.

Children share books as a class, in groups and individually. We work with children to develop their understanding of texts through guided reading and whole class comprehension activities and have recently introduced 'Reading Vipers' to focus on the key areas of comprehension. All children are free to visit the school library and we encourage pupils to take school library books home alongside individual reading books.

Reading Vipers

We use the Literacy Shed's 'Reading Vipers' in our whole class and small group teaching. The Reading Vipers approach helps to develop key comprehension skills and enables the children to become more successful readers.  Each of the letters stand for one of the key areas of learning:

V - vocabulary

I - infer

P - predict

E - explain

R - retrieve

S - sequence (KS1) summarise (KS2)

Below is a link to the Literacy Shed website where there is a set of example comprehension questions that can be used when reading with your child at home. 

Literacy Shed - Reading Vipers

Supporting your child with reading

Research shows that reading regularly at home as well as at school is the key to academic success. Children should aim to read 4 or 5 times a week minimum, but daily reading would be better.

As they becomes more independent readers in Key Stage 2, we would advise you to encourage them to read a wide range of books and other reading material.  

As a parent, you can ask questions about the story that your child is reading and this will help to develop their comprehension skills. 

We appreciate your help with supporting your child's reading. More information and suggested books can be found here.

Follow the links to the reading vipers targets for each year group.

Phonics

Phonics is taught throughout the school following the Read Write Inc Spelling scheme.

Topic Work

The foundation subjects are taught in cross curricular topics to make the work more meaningful and relevant to the children. We believe very strongly in a broad and balanced curriculum and we are creative in our approaches to teaching and learning, ensuring our curriculum is relevant to the needs of our children.This thematic approach lends itself to cross-curricular links and the transference of skills, knowledge and concepts across subjects. The curriculum consists of activities designed to promote personal, spiritual and physical development in our children. We offer a curriculum which meets the needs of individuals with an appreciation of the child’s existing experience, differing rates of maturing, preferred ways of learning and previous achievements. Your child will be taught to work individually, in a group and as part of a class or team. Each day is different and we employ a range of strategies to engage and meet the needs of pupils. Teachers plan their work in teams to ensure that equality of learning opportunity exists for all pupils.

Our topic cycle is as follows: