Curriculum Enrichment
At Bader Primary School, we offer a wide range of experiences and opportunities which enrich the curriculum. This allows our pupils to be able to learn outside the classroom and develop skills beyond primary education. We achieve this through well-chosen curriculum visits, workshops and topic related days. We also personally invite visitors to the school – for example, authors, parents, and sports people.
Thanks to our Sports Partnership with Conyers School, our pupils take part in many competitive sporting events. Alongside this, our school provides many extra-curricular clubs, some run by our own staff and some by outside providers. Our clubs range from phonics, biking, and science, to name but a few.
As a school, we are constantly looking at ways to enrich and enhance our curriculum. We seize every opportunity to widen our children’s experiences both during the school day and beyond.
Children are given the opportunity to attend a residential trip (particularly in Year 6), where they can challenge themselves through a range of outdoor pursuit activities. It is certainly something that they look forward to!
As a school, we offer pupils opportunities to participate in extra-curricular activities after school. These are run by our staff and offer a wide range of activities for children to enjoy. This could be creating or experimenting in Science club, or inventing something to save the planet in Eco-Explorers club, or learning to code in Computing club! Year 5 children can also get involved with Stockton Children’s Book of the Year, where they read and review a range of fiction texts with other children across Teesside.
We hold weekly assemblies linked to Rights Respecting School and the Fundamental British Values to promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, and provide clear guidance on what is right and what is wrong. We also hold two celebration assemblies each week to celebrate the fantastic achievements across school.
We invite many visitors into our school to help enhance our curriculum through motivating and inspiring our pupils. We have had the opportunity to make links with the local community via the fire brigade, the local mosques, churches and other places of worship, the local bookshop and Thornaby Library. Each visitor passionately shares their expertise and works alongside our children to enrich their learning and understanding. These experiences have included Challenging Children in Industry for Year 5 pupils, learning about the past from an Anglo Saxon lady and zooming with renowned authors such as David Almond and Tom Palmer.
School visits and trips are an important part of our curriculum, as they provide our children with first hand experiences of the topics we cover and bring learning alive. Children have had the opportunity to visit: Tweddle farm, Yorkshire Wildlife Park, Shildon Train Museum, Teesmouth Centre, Alnwick Castle, and Arbeia Fort. Alongside these topic based excursions, we delight in taking the whole school to the theatre to enjoy a Christmas performance.
Our children have the opportunity to participate in a range of workshops throughout the year, focusing on different skills, some of which will be important throughout their life, such as pedestrian training and bikeability. We also look forward to taking part in the Snappy performances in which children from a range of schools across Teesside rehearse and then perform a range of songs together. Hearing the amazing performances certainly boosts the community spirit!
Throughout the year, hook and final flourish days are woven into the curriculum to extend the breadth and balance of opportunities we offer our pupils. Therefore, each topic begins with a ‘Hook Day’ where the children may experience a visitor or a trip out to provide an exciting introduction to the topic and help inspire a love of learning. To end our topics, each year group showcases their learning journey. These showcases can take many forms: a play, songs, discussions, workshops. We invite families into school so that our children can share their learning journey. Children have been involved in Stone Age day in Year 3, Ancient Greek day in Year 4 and Captain Cook day in Year 2 recently.
Some other special opportunities we look forward to being involved in are World Book Day, Anti-Bullying week, Save the Children, Christmas jumper day and British Science Week, to name a selection.
Bader Primary School provides opportunities for children to take part in a wide range of musical activities and performances where they are encouraged to sing, compose and work creatively with sound. Through active listening, pupils’ awareness, understanding and appreciation of a wide variety of music are developed. A range of opportunities are provided within and beyond the curriculum for children to showcase their musical skills and talents, for example TVMS Snappy Summer.
As a school we appreciate and understand the importance of drama within our curriculum. Drama is developed across the whole school in a variety of ways including story-telling, hot-seating, freeze frames and providing children with opportunities to present their half term’s work using drama and singing. In addition, children perform the Nativity each December.