BEING A NOBURY LEARNER

At Norbury Hall we have devised our curriculum to be a child focused, enquiry based learning experience that promotes a new injection of interest and creativity to work with each academic year.

Our curriculum is newly written year on year.  We take an element of the statutory curriculum and use it to lead the theme for the term.  Our themes run across the school from our 5 year olds in Year 1 to our 11 year olds in Year 6 showing clear continuity and progression.  Our curriculum starting points vary each year.  Previously we have started with a person, a number, a phrase and this year, we started with a question.  Our intention is to use a starting point that promotes a sense of enquiry and challenge and allows the learner at Norbury to lead in aspects of their learning. This level of learning allows the children to think more deeply and challenge their own learning but most impressive of all is the level of subject knowledge that is ultimately acquired.

Our themes are built up as a cross curricular approach to enquiry. Where possible we make links between subjects and celebrate these in one established learning journal or theme book.  Whether the focus is as effective communicators, mathematicians, historians, designers, linguists, active citizens, sporting heroes, geographers, musicians, digital leaders or as members of a diverse society we make the curriculum links.  Wherever possible, we take the learning outside.

It is this philosophy of experiential learning that is the foundation of our vision.  By use of enquiry and questioning our children are encouraged to lead their learning.  They have opportunities to design part of the curriculum and this sense of ownership engages our children to find out more and develop their own sense of interest.  We see this most evident in home learning journals where children can make choices through a ‘bucket list’ option to produce a piece of work of their choice.  Many of our children will choose to extend a line of enquiry pursued in class.

Our school promotes learner voice with the use of learning walls to raise and respond to questions. Learners are encouraged to contribute to our environments with their thoughts and observations.  It is common practice to see post its added to the walls with unusual questions and children are encouraged through MAD Time (make a difference time) weekly to make reference to other learner’s work to find answers to the questions as well as compliment work that should be commended.

Our school has fully embraced a coaching philosophy. This is illustrated between our learners who together share a love of reading and spend weekly sessions throughout the year celebrating chosen authors as well as solving maths problems together. The children support each other at break times engaging in social time at the table, model making, reading or playing games.  Our Y5 Behaviour Ambassadors work in the playground as coaches to talk through friendship issues or game based disputes. Our ambassadors listen and respond with advice and refer our children to the school’s code of conduct and our golden rules. They use restorative approaches to manage behaviour and this model works well to support our weekly circles and PSHE sessions right across school from Nursery to Year 6.

Our ability to promote learning outside of the classroom, to see natural habitats for real, to solve problems in a practical, hands on manner and the use of peer coaching as well as learning led by learners has had a significant impact on all our outcomes.

Our children have an outstanding attitude to learning and are confident and resilient learners who contribute considerably to the curriculum they follow.  It is this positive attitude that is fostered through skilled teaching and well- designed learning experiences that ensures our school continues to go from strength to strength.

We adhere to a set of Norbury Values that permeate every facet of our learning experience.

Democracy

We promote a school experience that allows everyone to have a voice and share a viewpoint. We vote for and elect our own councillors who have the opportunity to voice how to make our school a better place.

Individual Liberty

We learn in a school that recognises how fortunate we are to live and learn in a free society. One where we have choices and can share our thoughts with those we learn with.

Rule of Law

We follow a simple set of rules that promote the very best attitudes and allow everyone in our school to learn.

Mutual Respect

We value everyone in our school community and show, through our behaviour and attitude that we have mutual respect and care for one another.

Tolerance of Those with Different Faiths and Beliefs

We are proud that our school is made up of learners with different thoughts, beliefs and faith and we work together to listen and share wherever we can.