Grand Union Village School
Curriculum
Curriculum
Our curriculum at Grand Union Village School provides child led, motivating and relevant learning opportunities through a play-based approach/provision.
It is designed to help our learners thrive today and build happier, healthier futures.
• Communication – Pupils have a choice and a voice throughout the school day. Pupils learn to communicate using methods appropriate to their stage of development developing ownership of their own learning.
• Independence – Pupils are sensitively supported by highly skilled adults to actively participate in our school & wider community, at home and in their later lives. Pupils learn to anticipate, predict and participate in routines and healthy habits that enable them to develop independence.
• Active learning – Pupils learn through doing within real-life, motivating and engaging environments. In this play-based approach, pupils learn through exploring, discovering and investigating whilst developing social interaction skills. Staff are skilled at facilitating learning and modelling play approaches meeting each pupil ‘where they are at’ and enabling each pupil to experience a sense of achievement and sustain learning.
In order to meet all of our pupil’s needs, our curriculum is organised into three pathways. Each pathway requires differing provision in terms of teaching and learning approaches and environments with pupils working towards our pathway milestones (underpinned by the EYFS Framework). Our three-year thematic cycle ensures a breadth and balance of learning within each pathway.
Our Early Learners Pathway provides our youngest pupils with a structured and motivating curriculum in a nurturing and secure environment where all pupils feel safe to explore our indoor and outdoor environments whilst learning through first hand experiences, regardless of their cognitive ability, physical or sensory need. Sessions are repeated across the week and term to encourage pupils to build routines, expectations and begin to anticipate learning and tasks.
Our Experience Learning Pathway is designed to expose pupils to early cognitive development that encourages engagement and understanding of themselves. Pupils will access an engaging early developmental, sensory and schema-based curriculum.
Our Explore Learning Pathway is for pupils with complex attention and interaction needs, who are unlikely to tolerate a ‘high demand’ approach to learning. Pupils will explore a highly motivating developmental, sensory and schema-based curriculum that supports regulation and builds engagement. Pupils begin to tolerate and accept others socially. Low demand play skills are developed and pupils are provided with opportunities to explore life skills to support them at home and in the community.
Our Engage Learning Pathway is for pupils who are ready to begin engaging in a wider range of learning areas, including understanding the world around them. Pupils at this stage engage in early, functional English and Mathematics whilst learning how to use their communication method across the school day. Expressive subjects provide an environment for pupils to consolidate foundation skills whilst further developing play skills in real-life contexts. Pupils are provided with opportunities to explore life skills to support them at home and in the community.
If pupils are learning at a level where they can begin to access elements of the early National Curriculum, we extend their learning in line with their individual abilities in preparation for a transition to a new setting. This prepares pupils for transition to a new setting.
As well as offering a broad, balanced and relevant curriculum, we believe that the links between language development and cognition advancement are the key drivers in ensuring progress and improvement.
Teaching and learning opportunities
We believe that all the experiences that a pupil encounters, from their arrival at school to the time they leave each day, present teaching and learning opportunities.
The curriculum at Grand Union Village School is therefore not just classroom-bound, but is the foundation of all that we do to provide capitalising upon these learning opportunities and making them accessible, manageable and of worth for each pupil. It is reflected in the school environment, the conduct and values of all staff and the carefully-planned and sensitive support we provide.
Learning takes place all over the school site and in the local community, using classrooms as a secure base for pupils, traditional teacher-led sessions and social group-work. Further opportunities are found in the routines of transition times, break-times and times of self-care.
Learning Themes
At Grand Union Village School, the curriculum is delivered through whole school themes for each term that are broken down into themes related to each Key Stage. Whole school themes are enhanced further through our core and expressive subject areas, adapted to meet the learner characteristic for pupils accessing different learner pathways, ensuring interventions and therapies are integrated throughout the day.
As these themes follow a three-year cycle, each pupil will experience most whole school themes twice within the context of each key stage theme. Year 6 pupils are given the opportunity to consolidate and expand their learning through revisiting the theme they experienced in Year 3 with greater depth.
Themes provide pupils with a variety of experiences throughout their time at Grand Union Village School, whilst they work towards their own individual goals. Therefore, learners who need to spend a number of years developing a specific skill can still experience this through a variety of mediums.
Resources are also sourced that relate to each term’s theme, providing teachers with a bank of diverse curriculum resources, thus providing pupils with broad and balanced learning opportunities as they progress through each key stage.
Communication
All our pupils different needs are assessed using 6 communication bandings and we deliver our curriculum to match them.
Right to Withdraw from Religious Education (RE)
Parents and carers have the legal right to withdraw their child from all or part of Religious Education. This right can be exercised at any time and does not require a reason.
If you are considering withdrawal and would like to discuss this further, or to understand how RE is taught at Grand Union Village School, please contact the school so we can talk through the options with you.