Our Primary Curriculum

Dream, Believe, Achieve, Succeed

 By working together in partnership, we strive to support our children to become caring individuals, who can achieve their potential in a vibrant learning environment.

Curriculum Intent

At Marsh Lane Primary, our curriculum is designed to recognise children’s prior learning; provide first-hand learning experiences; allow the children to develop interpersonal skills, build resilience and become creative, critical thinkers. It is fundamental for all of our children to believe that they are unique, valuable and capable of success.

We offer a balanced and thematic curriculum for our children to instill our core values and to build resilience. We are a fully inclusive school that offers first hand learning and exposure to world. We aim to provide rich learning experiences that allows aspirational thinking to be reinforced and is woven both in and beyond the classroom, so that our children feel that their talents and interests are championed by all of the adults who work with them.

Building a strong sense of community, is vital for our children in order for them to expand their knowledge of the countries, cultures and landscapes beyond Marsh Lane.   We affirm that working and learning together is vital to build social and cultural cohesion and to become kind, empathetic and compassionate citizens who value diversity. 

At Marsh Lane Primary we aim to promote positive attitudes to learning which reflect the values and skills needed to promote responsibility for learning and future success.  We want our children to articulate their knowledge with confidence, using a wide range of appropriate and ambitious vocabulary with precision. 

Children leave our school with a sense of belonging to a tightly knit community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections and become lifelong learners. 

Curriculum implementation

Our curriculum is organised into thematic half termly topics which weave together key activities, meeting both the National Curriculum expectations and reinforcing threshold concepts across the years, with key milestones that build on development year by year. Opportunities for learning essential skills founded on reading are woven through the curriculum on a continuous basis.

Please click here to see our Topic overview for EYFS, KS1 and KS2

We plan for developing key vocabulary in each term, as well as defining ‘sticky knowledge’ and using identified key texts to support and underpin the learning. We ask key questions and plan for a range of shared learning outcomes to give our learning purpose.

We are beginning to develop how we continually assess how effective learning has been and the impact it has had on future development, through quizzes, poster activities, presentations and other shared learning outcomes.

Curriculum Impact 

Our curriculum places our children's learning at the core and allows them to make connections in their knowledge, skills and understanding that are vital across all subjects.

At Marsh Lane Primary, we want our children to be fully prepared for the next stage of their education and to become life-long learners. We strive to ensure that our children’s attainment in core and foundation subjects is in line with or exceeding age-related expectations.  We want our children will be fully prepared for their next stage of education and ready to contribute positively to society as a whole.

Our work on promoting social skills, including values, resilience and well-being enables the children to become the very best that they can be. 

 We want our children to DREAM big in their aspirations, BELIEVE in themselves, ACHIEVE their full academic potential and SUCCEED in life.

 The Primary Curriculum is divided into the following subject areas:

 Core subjects: English, Mathematics, Science and Computing

Foundation Subjects: History, Geography, Art, Music, Design and Technology, Personal, Social and Health Education and Physical Education.

Modern Foreign languages: We followed an Italian scheme previously for 3 years, but have reviewed this in light of our MFL strengths. Initially children are taught basic Spanish in Year 3/4 and German in Year 4/5 and 6. 

The schemes or resources listed below form a part of the teaching in these subjects and are based on National Curriculum entitlements, although these are supplemented by other approaches or plans. Other subjects are based on the National Curriculum and are planned discretely by teachers.

Phonics - Bug Club Phonics 

Maths - White Rose

RE - Derbyshire Agreed Syllabus

Computing - Purple Mash

PSHE - DCC scheme PSHE Matters

PE - Real PE 

Music - Charanga

We have specialist staff from the local comprehensive school, who have delivered mandarin for half a term to Year 5/6 for the last four years as part of our partnership work. Due to current Covid19 restrictions we were sadly unable to provide this for the last 2 years, but have had this delivered to our Year 6 pupils this year. We will also be holding a 'Chinese Culture' morning for our Year 4/5 pupils. 

Planning and Delivery of the Curriculum:

 A variety of teaching methods are used to deliver the curriculum, due to the limited time children spend at school. Lessons are delivered using methods such as whole class delivery, group work and individual programmes of study integrated across the curriculum, based on the needs of the individual child. 

We aim to provide memorable, enjoyable and stimulating learning opportunities for our pupils and to involve parents where possible with our thematic ideas, through class newsletters, INSPIRE workshops and opportunities to spend the morning in school to see the progression of subjects e.g. whole school maths morning, phonics workshops and reading.

 At Marsh Lane, we are always seeking to innovate where appropriate and to maintain and provide the best in primary curriculum possible.

Our parent information leaflets for each year group can be found below:

      Parent Leaflet-Year1    Parent Leaflet-Year2     ParentLeaflet-Year3  

      Parent Leaflet-Year4    Parent Leaflet-Year5     Parent Leaflet-Year6

If you would like further information regarding our curriculum please email enquiries@marshlane.derbyshire.sch.uk and we will put you in contact with the relevant coordinator.