Footprints Curriculum: our learning, our impact, our world

At Springfield we want our children to love learning.  We want them to come to school every day excited about learning new things, confident to try new experiences and enthusiastic about new challenges.   We want each child to experience success and to leave us at the end of primary school as caring, thoughtful citizens who are ambitious for themselves and fully prepared for secondary school.   We want their experience of primary school to be a happy one, where great memories are created,  where children are immersed in experiences that take them outside their classroom , where we ignite their curiosity and  encourage  their imagination.

We intend to achieve the above, through a well planned, ambitious curriculum which is bespoke to our school.   We serve a diverse and vibrant community who speak many languages and come from many different parts of the world.  A significant number of our children have two places they call home.   Many have travelled from abroad to settle in the local area but still return regularly to spend time with family.  Both their home here and abroad are equally important to them.  Our curriculum has been designed to both celebrate this duality and learn from our diversity and to broaden our children’s horizons further.

Our curriculum provides opportunities for our children to celebrate their local area and to understand its geography and history.   It takes them beyond their immediate local context as they learn about the city of  London  and the wider study of the UK,  and further afield, as they learn about what it means to be a global citizen.   Our study of the history, geography, music and artwork of countries around the world is intended to help our children see that which lies outside of their personal experiences.

We have placed the development of language at the heart of our curriculum. We value the many languages spoken by both our children, staff and parents.  As a school with a large proportion of children who speak English as an additional language, our curriculum is designed to ensure that our children develop into confident speakers, readers and writers, that they read widely and develop a real love for books that they take with them into adulthood.     There is a strong emphasis on teaching the basic skills of reading, writing and maths to the highest standard so that our children can achieve their full potential.

We believe that our children should  grow up to be caring citizens who are thoughtful and respectful, not just of each other but also of the world around them.   We want our children to learn about the fragility of our planet and the role they play in protecting it.  This ‘intent’ is woven through our Footprints curriculum and embedded in the topics the children learn about.  We ensure that our children have opportunities to learn outdoors, to respect their environment and to understand that we all leave a ‘print’ or mark on the world.

Our curriculum has been developed by staff after careful analysis and reflection of the needs of our children at Springfield.  We have thought carefully about the places in the world we want our children to learn about, the events that will capture their imagination and the important knowledge, skills and understanding we want them to have by the time they leave us.