Phase 3
Years 4, 5 & 6
Our Philosophy:
Encouraging a love of learning is an integral part of the ethos here in Phase Three, and as part of this, learners at all stages are supported to find pleasure in challenge and be aspirational in their learning – due to this our pupils make excellent progress over their time in Phase Three. It is of note that achievement at the end of Phase 3 is significantly higher than national and that of Outstanding schools. This means that our pupils have an excellent starting point when they leave Preston Hedge’s and begin the next stage of their education at secondary school.
Reading is a priority within the phase: children are encouraged to read widely for pleasure, and discuss their reading with others. Each class has a classic read that they read as part of their homework and record in their reading journals. The children will then have the opportunity to discuss the text with each other and the class teacher and tackle comprehension questions. Additionally, each class has a class reader that they read together: every day, at the end of day, the class teacher reads the children extracts of classic text during ‘ Book Time’ – a time where our children relax and lose themselves within a story. Both pupils and teachers relish this opportunity to read whole books, and our children gain many educational benefits from this time. We also take every opportunity to read throughout the wider curriculum areas, in order to develop valuable research and information gathering skills.
Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) is an integral part of the new curriculum and is a focus in Phase Three this academic year. SPaG is taught discretely during weekly sessions and referenced throughout both English writing and reading sessions. During SPaG sessions, children experience progressively pitched SPaG objectives to ensure, by the end of Key Stage Two, they have full coverage of the new curriculum expectations.
The strong core skills that our pupils gain in Reading, Writing & Mathematics, are utilised and given a context within a broad and creative curriculum. Phase Three offers the children a diverse range of exciting experiences, from becoming astronomers or developing video games to the entrepreneurial experience of creating a product, marketing it and selling it in a Phase Three Enterprise event.
Our philosophy in Phase Three is that the children will be well prepared to continue successfully into secondary education and beyond. To this end, we endeavour to include our six Modern British Values throughout our curriculum to ensure that our pupils are role models for all of society. These are : aspiration, caring, self-discipline, resilience, co-operation and tolerance. We take the time in our curriculum to study those that reflect these Modern British Values and learn from them. Additionally we ensure that our wider curriculum gives children memorable experience to learn from. These include: visits from the National Space Centre to learn about our universe, Shakespeare productions at the Royal & Derngate Theatre and trips to KidZania in London to learn about our future aspirations and career paths.
If you have any questions with regard to any part of your child’s experience in Phase Three, please do not hesitate to pop in and have a chat with me.
Mr Ian Sinnamon
Assistant Principal
A Day In Phase 3
Each morning the children start the day with focused and purposeful morning work. This can range from handwriting practise to reading for pleasure. During the morning all year groups have English and Maths lesson that follows the same consistent structure throughout each year group.
Mathematics
Maths in Phase Three is taught through progressive, interactive lessons with lots of whiteboard work. Each session has a mental maths objective, main learning objective and a challenge objective which are referred to throughout the session. Teachers assess the learning of the pupils as individuals throughout the session and extend or consolidate the learning, where it is needed, to ensure each child makes good progress against the objectives. Every Monday each class has an arithmetic session, which focuses on formal written methods for all four operations and operations with fractions. These sessions give the children a solid foundation in which to build on in other maths areas.
The calculation policy below is designed to give pupils a consistent and smooth progression of learning in calculations across the school.
Preston-Hedges-Calculation-Policy
English
In English, the children study a genre specific unit of work created by the teachers. This could be Science Fiction based stories in Year Six, Newspaper reports based on a crime most foul in Year Five or Fantasy tales in Year Four. To immerse the children in the genre they will spend time exploring the genre and identifying genre specific features, styles and vocabulary. Each unit ends with an independent Big Write, which gives the children the opportunity to show all they have learnt. Between each unit of work, the children will have a reading week looking at a variety of different texts, analysing them and answering questions.
SPAG
A 15-minute Punctuation and Grammar session also takes place during the morning. Here the children learn about age specific areas of Punctuation and Grammar though pacey, interactive sessions. Each session focuses on one area of the punctuation and grammar curriculum and teaches key concepts and success criteria. The children then have the opportunity to practise the new learning through focused questions on that area, preparing them for future assessments.
Afternoon Curriculum
The afternoon sessions in Phase Three are a chance for the children to experience our creative curriculum. Each year group learns about the world around them through creative, exciting opportunities that they will remember for the rest of their lives. In the past, the children have acted out Shakespearean plays on the Royal & Derngate stage, been visited by Raptor Owl Foundation and created graffiti murals for the school based on our Modern British Values with the help of a graffiti artist. In addition to this, the children have one afternoon dedicated to PE per week.
Please visit our page PH Curriculum 19-20 to see the content of our curriculum