New Curriculum

Educating the whole child, achieved through an inclusive and supportive ethos, with kindness and community at the heart of our provision.

Our Curriculum - Intent

At Barley Hill Primary School, our firmly-held belief of ‘educating the whole child’ underpins every aspect of our carefully designed curriculum, which inspires, excites and enthuses our life-long learners. We have a caring, supportive and inclusive learning environment where every child is valued as a learner and citizen.

Our broad and rich first-hand learning experiences, capture the imagination of the children, enabling them to be creative, critical thinkers. The varied, stimulating opportunities and skills based lessons enable the children to connect and build their knowledge over time across all subjects, ensuring challenge for all and that each child is ready for the next stage of their learning.

Our curriculum is diverse and culturally enriching which reflects our children being an important part of our local community as well as responsible global citizens. We embrace our diversity and celebrate our unity as a caring community through a curriculum which is broad and engaging.

Our Values-based PSHE encourages children to take responsibility within the school, to value teamwork and to treat one another and all members of the school community with care, respect and tolerance. Through Building Learning Power (BLP), children develop resilience, seeing mistakes as a learning opportunity, becoming reflective on their own efforts. They take pride in their own achievements and those of others.

Our children are proud to be part of Barley Hill Primary School and the Thame community; they leave as happy, confident individuals with the skills they need to tackle and relish the challenges of lifelong learning.

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Our Year 6 House Captains have rewritten our intent statement, in child friendly language for all to understand. This is displayed in our classrooms and around school.

Barley Hill Primary School Curriculum Intent Statement for Children

At Barley Hill Primary School, our belief of ‘educating the whole child’ is shown in everything we do. Our Curriculum is designed to encourage and help us to enjoy our learning. We have friendly teachers who care and support us on our journey through Barley Hill Primary School, to become happy and successful young people.

Our lessons are creative, fun and engaging which help us to expand our knowledge. As well as being fun, our lessons help us to understand more about the world around us and provide challenges across all subjects.

Our school welcomes everyone and encourages people to connect with one another and become responsible young adults in our local community.

Through our school values, we learn to be confident, open-minded and responsible young people. We treat everyone with respect and kindness. We celebrate our achievements and those of others, through our weekly Star of the Week assemblies and our monthly Values Celebration Assemblies. We are encouraged to see mistakes as an opportunity to learn and we reflect on our learning to help us improve.

We are proud to be part of Barley Hill Primary School and the Thame community; we leave as happy, confident individuals with the skills we need to tackle and relish the challenges of lifelong learning.

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Our Mental Health and Wellbeing Intent

At Barley Hill School, we value and recognise the importance of mental health and the impact this can have, both positive and negative, on a child and their well-being, and overall progress. At Barley Hill School, we are committed to supporting the physical and mental health of all children and staff, enabling them to achieve their full potential. We have a caring ethos where everyone is valued and each contribution and idea is listened to and acted upon. We recognise that the mental health of our students and staff is of the highest priority: a child needs to be mentally and emotionally well in order to thrive and flourish. We recognise that a child experiencing poor mental health will not have the capacity to extend their conceptual understanding until their emotional well-being is addressed.

A key aspect of our role in school is to ensure that children are able to manage times of change and stress, and that they are supported to reach their potential or access help when they need it. We also ensure that children learn what they can do to maintain positive mental health, what can affect their mental health, how they can help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues, and where they can go if they need help and support.

Our aim is to help develop the protective factors which build resilience to problems with mental health, and to be a school where:

All children are valued.
Positive mental health is promoted and valued.
Children have a sense of belonging and feel safe.
Children feel able to talk through their emotions and feelings, knowing that adults around the school are there to support them through any emotion
Strategies to support mental health are taught and encouraged
Bullying is not tolerated

Some of the ways in which we promote this are:

PSHE lessons weekly and, where necessary, daily sessions to support any issues which may arise during the school day
Managing feelings resources; ‘calm boxes’ and ‘worry monsters’ which are available in every classroom
Access to the Sensory Room
Teaching the children strategies to support their own mental health – for example, through Zones of Regulation. Children are able to personally manage their responses to challenge and dysregulation, reducing adult intervention as they become older and more aware of their own mental health
Calm areas in the classroom for children to access when necessary
Yoga sessions
Therapeutic activities including art, Lego and relaxation and mindfulness techniques (such as breathing techniques)
Nurture interventions
Classroom Open Door policy; children are allowed to spend time in the classroom at break and or lunchtimes, if they need extra guidance and help in managing unstructured times
Working in partnership with parents and carers where there are concerns about mental health
Working with external agencies to provide additional support to those who need it
Meet and Greets for children who need additional support for morning transitions
Being a Values based school

At Barley Hill School, we recognise that for some of our children, they need additional support for their mental health. We have found that these children often need support for: