Grange Community Primary School aims to provide opportunities for children to develop as independent, confident, successful learners. We focus on encouraging children to work collaboratively and tailor our curriculum so it is engaging, but most of all, we choose topics pupils relate to.

We welcome children with different backgrounds, and we ensure our curriculum is highly inclusive so all children, including those who have additional needs, enjoy their education and make good progress in all subjects.  Our curriculum is flexible so staff members adjust the content to ensure we challenge and inspire learners but also ensure all children progress from their starting point.

Our curriculum has been designed to ensure coverage and progression with careful consideration as to what has been successful in the past. We aim to provide pupils with memorable experiences and those, which will raise aspiration; engage children and help staff to provide the children with opportunities which encourage them to want to learn and motivate them in their future lives.

Through developing Oracy skills, we encourage our children to be reflective learners and encourage pupils to articulate what has made them successful in their learning and how they can improve further. We encourage this discussion and reflection in all subjects, assemblies, and other interactions within the school, such as school council meetings, play leaders, librarian work and quality of education reviews. We have recently invested in the Chatta programme which aims to help pupils by removing barriers to learning through pictures and vocabulary.  We will be developing this across the school

We provide the following trips and experiences to our children in all year groups.  Trips are mapped out alongside the whole school curriculum to ensure they are purposeful whilst giving our pupils a wide range of opportunities. They include:

- Reception – wildlife park or zoo

- Year 1 – Jimmy’s Farm or zoo

- Year 2 –Landguard fort, history tour of Felixstowe, Fire service visit

- Year 3 – Colchester Castle

- Year 4 – West Stow or Sutton Hoo

- Year 5 – Maya Archelogy visit

- Year 6 – PGL residential, Duxford.

We support children learning their own instrument and as part of our curriculum year 4 have an external music teacher come in once a week from county music service to teach them brass, this leads to an end of year concert called the WCET festival held at Trinity Park. 

We also have Rock Steady provide extracurricular lessons every Friday morning, these are available for parents to sign up to.

We have various clubs running after school, provided by our teaching staff, we are also open to external providers to run after school clubs, currently Xtratime Sports run a sports club once a week. We also have a craft club at lunchtimes.

School and subject leaders play an important part in monitoring the success of the curriculum by being involved in a regular programme of monitoring, evaluation and review which is done through our quality of education reviews.  These involve dropping into lessons and speaking with pupils whilst looking at their work to ascertain how their knowledge and understanding has developed in different subjects.  Based on the outcomes of reviews and on-going evaluation, staff are then involved in suggesting adjustments to the curriculum. Due to the curriculum that we have designed, we have ensured engagement from all children and found a variety of ways for children to demonstrate their understanding, including opportunities to apply their oracy skills. Children have presented to parents and other children; used ICT to create programmes; written information booklets and PowerPoint presentations; created group brochures and posters; as well as being inspired to write high-quality creative and factual pieces of writing.  Enjoyment of the curriculum helps our children to achieve and grow in confidence.

Phonics programme - We run daily Read Write Inc sessions throughout key stage one, Read Write Inc. is a phonics-based literacy programme, with adaptations for older children and those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Its main goal is to develop reading fluency, comprehension, spelling, and writing skills through structured, daily lessons.

Grange Community Primary school prides itself in its Forest schools provision, to read more about this please click here

We offer support to pupils via our ELSA - ELSA is a trained member of school staff who works with children and young people to support their emotional wellbeing and social development. Through individual or small-group sessions, ELSAs help pupils develop skills such as understanding and managing emotions, building confidence and self-esteem, developing positive friendships, coping with change and loss, and improving resilience.

ELSA support is tailored to each child's needs and provides a safe, nurturing space where pupils can talk, reflect, and learn strategies to help them succeed both emotionally and academically. By promoting emotional wellbeing, ELSAs help children feel more confident, engaged, and ready to learn.

Areas of support may include:

• Emotional awareness and regulation
• Self-esteem and confidence building
• Friendship and social skills
• Managing anxiety and worries
• Bereavement and loss
• Anger management
• Coping with change and transitions
• Developing resilience and problem-solving skills

ELSA sessions complement the support provided by parents, carers, and teachers, helping pupils thrive both in school and beyond.

We use Jigsaw PSHE and RE which is a fully comprehnsoce whole school approach, focusing on the development of emotional literacy, social skills and spiritual development. If you have any questions about particular content please speak to the class teachers, parents/carers are able to withdraw their child from all or any part of RE if they wish to do so.