Within the FORT Federation all stakeholders have a clear understanding of our vision for every pupil. This is encapsulated by our mission statement
“Growing together; aiming high”
We have a shared vision of the skills and qualities every pupil should have by the time they leave the FORT Federation. We aim to achieve this by doing the following:
To nurture independent, responsible, life-long learners equipped with creative thinking skills to enable them to respond to the challenges of the world they live in.
To enable pupils to become confident individuals with a positive self-esteem, have a thirst for knowledge, and high expectations of themselves.
To create a positive attitude to learning, by encouraging confident and caring relationships which motivate and inspire them to do their best.
To support pupils to become confident in making decisions, be able to take risks and persevere to allow them to challenge their learning and maximise their potential.
To foster an environment of politeness and good manners in which each child is able to communicate and collaborate effectively.
To celebrate their individuality and that of others, with a respect of all and the world we live in, and an understanding of their place in modern Britain and the World
This is summarised by our wish for all to have a ‘Love of Life and Learning’.
We wish pupils to acquire skills for life, so that they are able to apply these and have a thirst for knowledge, through enjoyment and by experiencing a wealth of opportunities. We aim to prepare children fully for life in modern Britain through our broad, balanced curriculum and our strong ethos underpinned by Christian values promoting spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
We have developed a creative, enquiry-based curriculum that successfully offers a wide range of developmental opportunities. This topic-based, creative curriculum enables pupils to be highly inspired and immersed in challenging learning opportunities whilst providing a broad and balanced curriculum that will meet the individual development of all the children in our care. Themed days are held to enrich the experiences for the children, while visits and visitors also enhance the curriculum.
This year we are beginning to use P4C, philosophy for Children, The basics of philosophy for children are straightforward. Children share some reading, listening or viewing with their teacher. The children take some thinking time to devise their own questions. They choose a question that interests them and, with the teacher's help, discuss it together. The teacher aims to get children to welcome the diversity of each other's initial views and to use those as the start of a process that encourages children to question assumptions, develop opinions with supporting reasons, analyse significant concepts and generally apply the best reasoning and judgement they can to explore the question they have chosen. we want to explore the big questions and recognise there aren’t always perfect answers.
All children are taught the core subjects of English, Mathematics, Science and Information Communication Technology (I.C.T.) and wherever possible this is integrated into the themed topic along with the foundation subjects. Religious Education is an important area of the curriculum and is taught either through the creative curriculum or as a separate lesson. All pupils have French, Music and Physical Education lessons each week taught by specialist teachers.
Our termly topics are introduced through to engage and excite pupils immediately in the theme. For this reason we do not publish our Long Term Plan but we publish our curriculum planners for each class just after the start of term.
We use Cornerstone Curriculum as the building blocks but the children play an integral part in the direction of the topic, having identified what they know and what they would like to know and discovery next.
Core and Foundation Subjects
These subjects are taught wherever possible within our topics. We follow National Curriculum guidelines, full details can be found here.
For reception Class we follow the EYFS Curriculum guidelines available here.
There is a daily phonics session taught in our Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 classes in accordance with the Letters and Sounds document. This provides a synthetic and systematic approach to the teaching of phonics and supports both the development of children's reading and writing skills. Children in Key Stage 2 who have not yet acquired the necessary skills, or who are not yet secure in applying them independently, take part in focussed teaching groups.
Currently pupils are taught within the phase that is appropriate to their level of learning in their own classes. They are assessed regularly and groupings are sorted accordingly. In Key Stage 1 and 2 weekly spellings are based on the current week's teaching and contain both tricky and decodable words. Click to see our Approach to Reading and Phonics
We teach ‘Life Skills’. These are so important for pupils to be able to enjoy and participate fully in today’s world. These include independence, self-confidence, communication, collaboration and creativity, to name but a few.
These skills are taught throughout the curriculum but also through special projects and events often linked with our local community and churches. .
For these events the children have run a charity afternoon with stalls of activities or items for sale. This are done with minimum guidance or help from staff.
- Work in in mixed age groups (reception to year 6)
- Choose their own leaders
- Selected what to do
- Considered views and ideas of all
- Used democratic voting to select ideas
- Had clear, high expectations
- Had clear plans with strategies to follow them through
- Showed good citizenship
- Used excellent teamwork
- Had enjoyment and fun
- Resourced themselves
- Were very supportive of each other
- Raised lots of money