Our Curriculum inspires children to 'Be the Best that they can be'

At Long Ditton Infant and Nursery School we are committed to providing a broad and balanced curriculum than enables children to:

Develop knowledge and achieve their learning goals

Be challenged and motivated

Be inspired and have a deep interest in the world

Prepare them for their next steps in their learning

Develop a wider interest in their passions and beliefs

Our curriculum is designed to provide opportunities for all of our children to develop the skills to be successful in the future. It is inspiring and creative and enriches children’s knowledge, skills and enthusiasm for learning. We ensure that all areas of the curriculum are underpinned with the teaching of the school’s Living Values and ethos. 

Our curriculum is broad and balanced and taught in a variety of ways including through whole class lessons or collaborative small groups, both in the classroom and outdoors.  Progression and continuity are carefully planned for, focusing on key knowledge and skills for each year group in each subject. Our intention is to inspire each child to be the best that they can be and to ensure that our children have an excellent understanding of skills that underpin learning for life.

Links are made across different areas of learning and flexible timetabling allows us to deliver subjects in a fluid way, ensuring that learning is maximised.  We fulfill the requirements of the National Curriculum as well as providing additional enrichment experiences and extra-curricular opportunities for our pupils. 

As a Living Values school our Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural (SMSC), British Values, moral and citizenship development are embedded throughout our whole curriculum.

Our intention is to be the best that we can be in all areas, ensuring a focus on the key knowledge and skills for each curriculum subject. This will enable our children to make progress from their starting points, build upon their knowledge and understanding and learn new skills.

       How We Learn...

• High quality texts: We love to read! Reading is at the heart of everything we do at Long Ditton Infant School & Nursery, and the books and stories we use are chosen to inspire a love and enjoyment of reading and to inspire our writing.
• First hand experiences: Special weeks, events or surprises in class along with trips, visitors and experts to inspire and develop knowledge and skills all contribute to give our curriculum learning experiences. 
• Role play and drama: Encouraged in every year group, in different subjects and topics we use role play and drama as a teaching tool to enable children get to develop their ideas and vocabulary creatively. 
• Outside Experts and Specialists: We work with an artists, authors, musicians, actors and real life workers to develop children's understanding of the real life implications of the curriculum they are learning. Our curriculum enables us to deliver wonderful performances with confident children to parents. 
• Themed Weeks or Days: To enrich our learning further, we hold a range of immersive themed weeks or days where we explore topics in details. Recent topics have included international week, safety week, space exploration day and even dinosaur day!
• Assessment: All teachers continuously provide high quality verbal feedback to children to support their learning. Time is spent discussing what children have done well as well as suggestions for improvements. Termly progress is monitored and fed back to parents and Governors and targets set to ensure progress continues.
• Home Learning: Each week in our Newsletter homework suggestions are given to support the learning that has taken place in school. Specific topic words are highlighted for parents to support vocabulary development.