Curriculum at Keep Hatch 

Our school curriculum is rooted in our vision of Aspire, Believe, Achieve.  You can see a whole school overview of our curriculum here.

Through carefully crafted opportunities, we promote enjoyment and enthusiasm for learning.  We pride ourselves on the standards of work produced by the children, particularly in the arts – pupils’ outcomes in Art, Music and Drama exceed National curriculum expectations and we are proud to showcase this work.

At Keep Hatch, children are provided with opportunities for exploration and are inspired to be creative, imaginative, reflective and independent within their learning. Our school places the highest importance on recognising the development of each individual child and our strong pastoral care supports all our children to flourish in a nurturing, inclusive environment.  We consider these skills to be a toolkit for life-long learning.

We believe that children learn best when they:

• are happy
• are interested and motivated
• achieve success and gain approval
• are given tasks which match their ability
• clearly understand the task
• are confident, feel secure and are aware of boundaries
• are challenged and stimulated

Reading and Phonics

At Keep Hatch, we are truly passionate about reading. Reading is such an important life skill and it is at the heart of everything we do.  A child’s reading experience is much more than the reading book that comes home from school; reading is happening all the time in the classroom and around the school. It is taught in specific reading and English lessons, but children are practising and using their reading constantly across all subjects too.  We want children to develop and love of reading as we believe this opens many doors to other aspects of learning.

Phonics is taught through the scheme ‘Read, Write, Inc’.  Children in Reception, Year 1 and at the beginning of Year 2, have structured phonics teaching every day, as well as children beyond this age who require the phonics intervention.  These sessions develop the child’s ability to tackle unknown words within a text by blending the sounds within the word. This is essential for reading and also spelling.  Children are set up to succeed with their reading which increases self-belief and confidence which leads to a love of reading. In addition, teachers read daily to the children so that they get to know different genres including stories, poetry and information books. There is more to reading than just phonics, so once children know all their phonic sounds and complete Read, Write Inc. they will have daily opportunities to hone their wider reading skills through Book Talk. This will support our mission to read for pleasure.

If you wish to receive any further information, please feel free to come in to the main school office to book an appointment to speak to your child’s teacher.