We believe in children. We believe children should laugh and learn. We believe children should play and progress. 

We believe all children should stand tall, reach high and love learning.  

Children are at the very heart of our curriculum. Their curiosity, ambitions, and potential shape everything we do, ensuring that learning is a lifelong journey. From the moment they join us, we nurture their growth—in the classroom and beyond, through every lesson, every friendship, and every new discovery. Whether they are learning together or independently, on the playground or online, we believe that every moment is an opportunity to inspire, challenge, and help them flourish. 

 At Bowerham Primary & Nursery School & Baby Unit we: 

  • Ensure all children have access to a fun and engaging, ambitious and creative curriculum that widens their life experiences 
  • Develop confident and independent learners with motivation, curiosity and a love of learning 
  • Ensure all children learn about and demonstrate the British Values of tolerance, mutual respect, individual liberty, democracy and rule of law 
  • While respecting differences including gender, ethnicity, religion and ability. 
  • Nurture, develop and challenge children to be aspirational and secure within themselves to prepare them for their future 

We believe: 

  • in providing an exciting, challenging and stimulating learning journey that is personalised for every child – our outstanding staff ensure all our children are motivated, engaged and inspired to fulfil their potential by removing barriers to learning and ensuring teaching is rich, diverse and innovative. 
  • all children thrive by learning in a safe and supportive environment – we encourage our children to reflect honestly on their performance, question their next steps and be prepared to take risks in, and responsibility for, their own learning. 
  • that every moment is a chance to learn, and that no moment should be lost – by focusing on our unique ‘Bowerham Family’ we provide countless opportunities to grow and develop the ‘whole’ child; forming a range of relationships across school, celebrating personal achievements and building independence, resilience and self-esteem. 
  • in collaborative learning – that working together with shared interests ignites children’s learning, promotes tolerance and mutual respect, celebrates differences and prepares our children for the challenges of life after primary school. 
  • talent should be nurtured and challenged to grow – we work tirelessly with our local community to create novel and meaningful experiences to stretch our more able children, from succeeding in sports and shining in science to powerful performances in drama and music; ability is cherished and celebrated. 
  • in equipping children with strategies to know more, learn more, and remember more – by embedding metacognitive teaching approaches, including pre-learning, revisiting concepts, and focusing on knowledge retention, we support children in securing their learning in their long-term memory. 

 

National Curriculum 

You can find out more about the National Curriculum which we follow at the Department of Education’s website here. 

Literacy at Bowerham 

At Bowerham Primary and Nursery School we believe that literacy is a strand that runs throughout the curriculum. We endeavour to provide a pupil led, exciting and enriched curriculum, whilst developing the key literacy skills children need to succeed. This area outlines the various schemes and approaches we use to ensure children make good progress in English. 

 Spelling 

In KS1, children are grouped according to their Phonic ability and spelling homework is linked to their learning in phonics. In KS2 we send out words each week as part of your child’s homework ready for their weekly spelling test on Friday, and every half term we will have a ‘Big Spell’ test. 

The Golden Purple Pen Award 

This is awarded weekly to children in each class who show great progress in their writing. The Golden Purple Pen winners receive a certificate, and their work is displayed in the classroom. They also receive a Golden Purple Pen which they can use in all their written work during the following week. 

 Just Write and Just Talk 

Your child will be set a Just Write on Showbie according to the cohorts needs. This could be up to two per half term. We ask that you talk through the topic with your child over the weekend so that they are ready for their ‘Just Write’ the following week. 

 

Reading at Bowerham

Early Reading 

Did you know that if children know eight nursery rhymes by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight? Rhyming helps children to break words down and to hear the sounds that make up words in preparation for reading and writing.  

To be ready to start reading, children need to have a variety of skills in place. These early reading skills include matching, rhyming, awareness of phonics and the skills associated with language development such as listening, attention, alliteration and sound discrimination. 

Reading in the EYFS 

At Bowerham we believe it’s never too early to read with a child. Sharing books, stories and rhymes is a daily part of learning to read, this not only promotes a love of reading but also an awareness of how information can be retrieved from text. Learning how to read is magical, for both children and their parents.  

Early Phonics 

In Nursery we introduce Phase One Phonics from the Red Rose Letters and Sounds document. This phase provides children with lots of speaking and listening activities which are essential to early reading development. The aim of phase one is for children to become attuned to the sounds around them as they engage in lots of rhyme and rhythmic activities. This is something we explore in lots of detail within Nursery to ensure these basic skills are embedded before the children move on to Phase Two in Reception Class. Parents can help their children at home by singing lots of nursery rhymes and sharing stories together every single day.  

In Reception Class the children move on to Phase Two, Three, Four and begin Phase Five Phonics from the Red Rose Letters and Sounds document.  Year 2 build on Phase 6 phonics and for children who did not pass the phonic screening check extra provision is provided. An active, fun approach is taken to teaching within each phase. 

 You can find a helpful video for ks1 Phonics here 

Reading at home  

Children are first introduced to books without words. These are shared both in class as well as at home with parents. Books without words allow the children to develop their speaking skills as well as their imagination. Once children begin to blend and segment words and are working confidently within phase two phonics, phase two appropriate books are sent home. Books are carefully selected and aligned to ensure that children can practise identifying and blending the sounds they have already learnt.   

We use a wide range of reading schemes to ensure breadth and depth in the early stages of reading.  Our schemes include The Oxford Reading Tree, Collins and Heinemann. Children are assessed on a regular basis to ensure that they are reading at the right level. Children should be able to read the books sent home to an adult with ease and should be able to discuss the content of the book and make predictions. As each child progresses through the phonic phases and become more confident with a wider variety of sounds, they will receive books of suitable challenge, again including only familiar sounds.   

 Books of a higher level are used within Guided Reading session in school to teach new skills and to make sure that children are making progress. We believe it is important that children have a rich diet of texts so we ensure that our reading schemes are supplemented by a selection of other reading material. All classes have a weekly trip to the school library where they are encouraged to read a wide selection of books. Throughout school, each year group has an author of the term or half term each class has a class novel that is shared throughout the week. 

 Online Reading – Bug Club – A finely-levelled Reading Scheme 

‘Bug Club’ is used to compliment our physical range of books. We blend this online reading scheme with the hard copies to ensure our children read a wide range of books in a variety of ways whilst building their comprehension, inference and understanding. 

 KS2 reading – Plagues of reading  

In Key Stage Two, after children have completed the Oxford Reading Tree and Collins schemes, children progress onto our ‘plagues of reading’ scheme. This can be found here: https://teachlikeachampion.org/wp-content/uploads/5-Plagues-Reading-Spine.pdf This consists of a broad variety of books separated into the following genres: 

 – Archaic texts – these tend to be older texts, in which vocabulary and sentences structures are different to those, typical of modern writing, e.g. The Railway Children, or The Secret Garden.  

 – Non-linear time sequences – these texts do not necessarily follow a chronological order, they may have flashbacks, or may move forward irregular time sequences, e.g. The Butterfly Lion, or Holes.  

 – Narratively complex – these texts have narrators that do not necessarily follow convention, or are not who/what you might expect, e.g., Fantastic Mr Fox, or War Horse.  

 – Symbolic texts or complex plots – these texts may have a theme, a moral, or a lesson threaded through the writing, e.g. The Iron Man, or Harry Potter  

 – Resistant texts – these are designed to be particularly difficult to understand and require lots of work to unpick meaning, e.g. The Red Tree, or Jabberwocky (poem).  

 Our aim is to encourage all children to read a range of quality texts, immersing themselves in different worlds, cultures, styles and literary structures; this will improve their ability to decode, their fluency and skills of comprehension, and in turn their ability to plan, draft and compose age-expected pieces of writing, across a variety of text types.  

 Children also have a “free reader” that they read alongside, and they have an allotted a library session in which they can visit the school library and read for pleasure. 

Support for parents at home 

https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/ 

https://www.booktrust.org.uk/books-and-reading/tips-and-advice/reading-tips/how-to-read-with-your-child/ 

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/ 

  

Maths at Bowerham

In all year groups we use BIG Maths CLIC sheets to support children’s progression in Arithmetic skills alongside a range of activities which develop number fluency. We believe fluency in number is the foundation of all Mathematical learning. We teach times tables, including the inverse of division facts, addition and subtraction facts, which helps children quickly recall facts when learning new concepts. We also explicitly teach reasoning and problem solving skills weekly, this begins in our early years foundation stage.
Previous strategies or knowledge is revisited and new strategies are modelled
clearly by the teacher. Pupils are then guided in their practise before working independently to apply new learning.

In KS1, children use many different concrete resources to support their learning before moving on to pictorial and abstract concepts. Once the children have learnt a skill they will then practise and apply this in many ways, in both their indoor and outdoor provision.

In KS2, we continue to use some concrete resources before moving on to pictorial and abstract representations when learning a new concept. Once new learning has taken place, the children show their fluency in that skill before moving on to applying their knowledge in a variety of ways, deepening their understanding in that mathematical area. 

RE Curriculum and The right to withdraw from religious education and/or collective worship 

Parents have the right to withdraw their children from religious education and/or collective worship. 

From age 16, pupils can choose for themselves to opt out of collective worship if they wish. However, they cannot opt out of receiving religious education without parental consent until they are 18