Curriculum
At Grangewood School, we provide an enriching curriculum which is broad, balanced and appropriate to the needs of each pupil, which focuses on the whole child.
Our Curriculum is broken down in to 4 pathways:
- Pre-formal: Experience
- Semi-formal: Explore
- Semi-formal: Engage
- Formal.
Each pathway is tailored to appropriately meet the learning needs of each pupil within the school, providing a personalised approach for each pupil.
Communication bands are at the core of all practice in the school.
We provide key opportunities for pupils to experience, develop and consolidate a range of skills and knowledge that they may use to develop their independence and enhance their lives. At the same time, it supports the development of character and well-being to ensure they thrive in the future.
The curriculum must therefore be flexible enough to meet the different needs of every individual in an ever changing school population, whilst laying the key foundations for the next stage of their lives.
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 Grangewood 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.
Find out more about our curriculum principles, framework and guidance and our termly subject overviews here.
Learning Themes
At Grangewood 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 Grangewood, 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.
EYFS learning themes
KS1 and KS2 learning themes
Communication
All our pupils different needs are assessed using 6 communication bandings and we deliver our curriculum to match them.
