Curriculum

We aim to provide: a vibrant and stimulating environment and a culture of love, nurture and growth so each child can reach their full potential by developing a lifelong love of learning and a desire to become the best they can be.

At Bilsthorpe Flying High Academy, our curriculum is specifically tailored towards the needs and interests of our children. We believe in love, nurture and growth beyond the academic where children are encouraged to achieve their individual highest standards both academically and holistically. We provide a broad and balanced curriculum which provides all our children with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to develop into well rounded, resilient, informed, confident individuals ready for the next phase of their education.

Our Curriculum is rich in literacy and vocabulary (knowing more words makes you smarter!), this enables our children to engage in their learning and develop a love of reading. We inspire our children through a range of "hooks" to capture imagination, curiosity and create life experiences to widen their horizons outside the village, Nottinghamshire and beyond.

High quality texts link to our topics, this is then developed through inquiry based approach where children use big questions and big challenges to take ownership of their own learning.

We believe in PHSE, SMSC and British values and they form an important part of our curriculum. It helps to give our children the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to lead confident, healthy, independent lives to be informed, active, responsible young people with the skills they need for the future.

Please visit the class pages where you will find the long and mid-term plans containing more details about the curriculum specific to each year group.

Our English curriculum vision

English teaching at Bilsthorpe Flying High Academy aims to:

• Inspire children through a range of ‘hooks’.
• Enable children to develop a love of reading.
• Give children opportunities to express themselves in different ways including through poetry and drama.
• Encourage positive attitudes to all areas of English by making it purposeful and fun!
• Ensure that children are confident and creative writers across a range of text types.

The National Curriculum for English aims to ensure that all pupils:

• read easily, fluently and with good understanding
• develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information
• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar and knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language
• appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage
• write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences
• use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas
• are competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

For more details on writing, reading and phonics please see the relevant links below:

https://www.bilsthorpeflyinghighacademy.co.uk/writing/

https://www.bilsthorpeflyinghighacademy.co.uk/reading/

https://www.bilsthorpeflyinghighacademy.co.uk/phonics/

Our philosophy for the teaching and learning of mathematics

For individual calculation policies please see relevant link below. 

We are taking a mastery approach to our teaching of mathematics.  Children are supported and challenged to grasp concepts and understand them more deeply.  Differentiation occurs in the support and intervention provided to different pupils (e.g. models and images used, adult support, questioning).  Any pupils having more difficulty in grasping a particular aspect of curriculum content are identified very rapidly and provided with extra support to help them master that content before moving on to new material.  Pupils who have grasped concepts quickly, are challenged with sophisticated problems that deepen their knowledge of the same content.

We believe that deeper understanding can be achieved for all pupils by questioning that asks how and why different mathematical techniques work and to make deep mathematical connections.  These questions are accessed by pupils at different depths and are used both to support and challenge.  For children to master curriculum content, they need to be fluent (not just accurate) and this involves reasoning mathematically and solving problems.

Our aim is for pupils to experience deep, sustainable learning of increasingly sophisticated mathematical ideas as they move through their primary mathematics education.