Curriculum Information

Stoke By Nayland is a small rural primary school in Suffolk.

We have a 2 year rolling cycle for EYFS and KS1 and a 4 year rolling programme for KS2. Currently, we are all following Cycle 1 (September 2021-July 2022).
Our rolling programme allows us to cater for our mixed age classes and ensures that children’s knowledge is developed in a systematic and consistent way. Children will revisit skills and knowledge during their time at Stoke By Nayland C of E Primary to enable learning to be consolidated and their understanding and knowledge to be deepened further.

We have decided to keep subjects separate at Stoke By Nayland C of E Primary School to ensure that children have a clear and developed sense of what learning looks like in each subject.

Within our discrete subjects we have some subjects that are taught continuously. These are Science, RE, PSHE, French, Music, and some that are taught on a half termly rotational basis these are History and Geography, Art and Design and technology.

Knowledge grids are used in all subject areas to pinpoint specific knowledge and vocabulary that we want the children to remember by the end of the topic. Our subject knowledge grids are linked to the Big ideas for that subject. Cross curricular links with other subjects are made when there is a natural, authentic link, but when this is not possible, subjects are taught discretely as part of mini topics. This ensures that teaching is of a high quality and is subject knowledge and skills driven.

In most cases, English is taught separately with a focus on using high quality texts and stimuli and children are expected to write for a variety of purposes. We are also developing a termly writing day. During the day the children will all encounter a new stimuli and then they will have opportunities to write a response to the stimuli. The first of these included a discovery of Dragons eggs in the eco garden and footage of dragons invading our school field, the second involved the children dressing up as pirates and becoming pirates for the day.

In each subject area there are three or four 'Big Ideas' which are revisited in different contexts each time the subject is taught. These are designed to support pupils in widening their knowledge and understanding of the world by revisiting familiar language and making explicit connections between concepts within a subject and with other subjects. During lessons we ensure that the children are clear on the Big Idea that is the focus of the lesson.

We also have three learning behaviour Big Ideas of Focus, Reflect and Perseverance. Throughout all sessions we encourage the children to use these learning behaviours and we encourage them to think about how effective their learning is through discussion and/or reflective journals.

View our Big Ideas across all subjects

Below you will find our Overview of all of the learning over the 2 and 4 year cycle. We also show how we group the subjects and more detailed information about each subject in each tab.

Our Subjects are divided into groups. They are as follows:
Core Subjects - English, Maths and Science
Discrete Continuous Subjects - Music, PE, ICT, MFL, RE and PSHE
Discrete Half termly Subjects – History/Geography, Art/ Design and Technology