Curriculum Enrichment
At Birchfield, it is important to us to make sure that our children, throughout their journey with us, will experience a wide range of different experiences and opportunities that help to raise our children's aspirations, promote pride in achievements that move beyond our curriculum. For us, education is not just restricted to the core subjects and shouldn’t be restricted to the classroom. Therefore, we plan plenty of exciting enrichment opportunities which enhance our curriculum at Birchfield, embed learning and life skills and of course create wonderful memories for our children to look back on.
Enrichment activities provided for our children can vary from being a whole school experience where they take part in immersive, themed curriculum days or enjoy and experience a range of workshops like Art. Throughout our teaching and learning, we also provide further opportunities to enhance children’s learning wherever possible. These include:
Whole School Themed Days
Throughout the academic year, we plan and deliver a range of themed days/weeks that extend the skills and knowledge of the curriculum. These include: Online Safety Day, Arts Week, Religious Education Experience Days, World Book Day, Black History Day, Mini-enterprise Week (Year 6), Science Days and Topic Themed Days linked to curriculum directly.
We continually look for opportunities where we can promote whole school learning and encourage themed days to happen regularly each term to promote our links with parental engagement.
Birchfield Experiences
A good education is the springboard for lifelong learning and an understanding and appreciation of others. At Birchfield, we recognise that learning is not just confined to the classroom; learning can occur anywhere!
Therefore, at Birchfield, we interweave the development of a child’s cultural capital at the heart of our broad and balanced curriculum. Cultural capital can be defined as the accumulation of essential knowledge needed to be educated citizens to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.
It is through this understanding that we have developed a list of experiences to empower children’s learning and deepen their knowledge of both curriculum and non-curriculum content. In short, the development of additional experiences for our pupils will strengthen the fabric of their learning and allow them to navigate through school with a deepened sense of security and happiness.
As a school, we have carefully selected the experiences that will be contextually important to the children. These chosen experiences and activities have been incorporated into our curriculum to enrich learning and enhance the children’s understanding of the world that we live in. Below is a small selection of activities that children will encounter throughout their journey at Birchfield.
In addition to these experiences, we also offer residential visits that take place in Year 3 and Year 5. The programme takes our children to Magdalena Farm in Year 3 to be immersed in outdoor adventures and experiences, where they will take part in adventurous activities such as looking after livestock, hiking and low ropes and being away from home without Mum and Dad. In Y5, we offer a city visit to Bath and Bristol or London, where your child will experience historical museums, visit and enjoy a theatre performance and experience the sights and sounds of being in the city.
Our Birchfield Pledge Categories
Our School Pledge
Outdoor Learning
As a school, we are very fortunate in being able to now offer our own outdoor learning opportunities with Mr Callis-Burr.
Sessions are designed around the needs of the group to ensure that they are learner-led. Many areas of the National Curriculum are intrinsically covered in our outdoor experiences.
Teamwork skills are developed through games and activities. Individual skills and self-esteem are heightened throughout activities such as hide and seek, shelter building, tool skills, lighting fires or environmental art. Each activity develops intra and inter-personal skills as well as practical and intellectual skills.
Outdoor Learning Overview 25-26
Educational Visits and Class Residentials
At Birchfield, we pride ourselves on delivering high quality trips that are fully risk assessed with reference to activities and individual cohorts. Every planned educational trip and visitor will directly link to the theme/topic that the children are learning about as well as a phase end of year residential trip for Years 3 and Year 5.
We encourage our teachers to offer as many out of classroom learning opportunities as they can because we recognise that they help to enrich the curriculum and improve educational attainment; boosts self-esteem and motivation; develops key skills; assists in developing and enhancing social skills of all our children whilst promoting health, fitness, fun and enjoyment.
Furthermore, the out of classroom opportunities we provide help to build stronger links between schools and communities and broaden a child’s horizons and their knowledge of the world around them.
Homework
Although homework can inform parents about children's current class work and stimulate their learning, we are not a school where homework dominates home and school life; we accept that not every activity will capture children and parents’ imagination and that weekends can sometimes be busy. We believe that homework should be enjoyable and manageable for all concerned and that if it becomes a chore or a source of conflict it ceases to be a constructive aspect of teaching and learning.
Our expectation as a school is that all children will read 3 times a week and complete their allocated time on Numbots or Times Table Rockstars to develop their fluency. Classes will set termly optional homework tasks linked to their learning that term. These are generally creative tasks, such as creating a poster or an artefact. These are then showcased in school and celebrated.
Please check your child's class page to check what different projects they have this term.
