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Red Kite Learning Trust

Our Curriculum

SMSC & Values

Coppice Valley Primary School (15)

SMSC stands for Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural education and is part of the National Curriculum.

At Coppice Valley, our aim is to inspire all our pupils to love learning and to be socially and morally responsible citizens of the world. Our purpose is to nurture the growth of the whole child - academically, socially and emotionally. Good relationships are at the heart of our school - our ethos is warm, supportive and family friendly.

Our school values – Brave, Kind and Curious – are embedded in our school SMSC education through PSHE lessons, assemblies and teachable moments that occur in the everyday life of the school.

You can read our SMSC Policy here and our Child-friendly SMSC Policy here


SMSC-Gold

The Citizenship Foundation National SMSC Quality Mark

Coppice Valley is the proud recipient of a GOLD SMSC award, recognising our work to promote excellent SMSC education.

 


How SMSC is taught and experienced at Coppice Valley

SMSC education is as much an approach as it is discrete experiences. SMSC is a golden thread that weaves through all we do – how we work in teams, discuss and debate, encourage reflection, consider ethical impact, explore the wonders of the world and give our pupils a voice.

Our curriculum is an important part of our SMSC (including values and character work) education as we have designed it with SMSC in mind. Our Coppice 50 are essential experiences that develop our pupils SMSC over their seven years with us. They are specific to the needs of our curriculum and context.


Character

Our character-building work is based around promoting and teaching our school values - Brave, Kind and Curious. Our approach to learning, our curriculum and our Coppice 50 helps our pupils build resilience and perseverance in the face of challenge (Brave), to show compassion (Kind) and to keep learning and growing as a person (Curious). Our curriculum stretches and challenges our pupils, encouraging them to think deeply, and developing their self-esteem and their confidence.

Our curriculum includes the 5 Foundations for Building Character

  1. Sport – which includes competitive sport and activities such as running, martial arts, swimming and purposeful recreational activities, such as rock climbing, hiking, orienteering, gym programmes, yoga or learning to ride a bike.
  2. Creativity – this involves all creative activities from coding, arts and crafts, writing, graphic design, film making and music composition.
  3. Performing – activities including dance, theatre and drama, musical performance, choir, and public speaking.
  4. Volunteering & Membership – for example, litter-picking, fundraising and working with local, national and global charities and groups to help others.
  5. World of work –we encourage entrepreneurship with our Young Enterprise Group. We provide opportunities to meet role models from different jobs through our membership in Primary Futures, a national group who bring people into school from a range of careers.

Universal Values

We understand we have a duty to provide for the Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural education of pupils whilst promoting the values of Democracy, the Rule of Law, Individual Liberty, Respect and Tolerance. These have been called British values but are now more commonly called Universal values as they underpin the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our work to promote pupils’ (SMSC) development -  including work on citizenship and community cohesion, anti-bullying learning, equalities and diversity work -  ensures we meet the government’s requirements to teach fundamental British values.

Values education does not only act as a preventative measure against radicalisation and extremism, but is also a vital part of preparing children to get on in life, creating critical thinkers and active citizens who respect others and challenge prejudice and discrimination.


Cultural Capital

The Cultural Learning Alliance  states that cultural capital "is characterised by the experience and skill to be able to deploy the appropriate knowledge in any given situation: a job interview, a conversation with a neighbour, building a work network and so on." It is often assumed to be about providing children with cultural experiences of 'high art' such as theatre, art and literature, but cultural capital can refer to much more including:

  • technical cultural capital – e.g. IT
  • emotional cultural capital - such as empathy and sympathy
  • embodied cultural capital – e.g. language, expressions, mannerisms;
  • national cultural capital - working on an assumption of an existence of traditions, the lack of which can act as a disadvantage

Our curriculum, including the Coppice 50, is broad and wide-reaching. It is a knowledge rich curriculum, designed to introduce pupils to the best that has been thought and said as well as the knowledge and skills they will need for life today such as emotional literacy and an appreciation for diversity and equality.


Beyond lessons, our pupils SMSC education extends to:

  • Whole school assemblies and weekly celebrations of values with parents
  • Visits to different places of worship and visits to school by different representatives of religions and belief-systems
  • Annual residential experiences for years 1-6 (sleepovers at school in KS1 and short trips away in KS2)
  • Christmas and Easter celebrations with our community
  • Diversity week - celebrating different religions, races, families and abilities
  • Around the World day - celebrating the cultures of the families in our school
  • Give it Go day - opening up our pupils' minds to try new things. Last year we did fencing, karate, knitting, tree-climbing and camp-fire making,
  • Meditation and mindfulness - part of our regular practice at Coppice Valley
  • Charitable projects - we support local, national and global projects
  • Eco-schools - we have an Eco Council and are in the process of achieving Eco-school status
  • GOLD Healthy schools status, Kindness UK School of the Year 2020, Anti-Bullying Alliance GOLD award, Positive Identities Service Beacon School status for Equalities
  • Termly whole school pupil voice conferences so our children can share their ideas with us about school improvement
  • Anti-bullying week - we teach pupils how to recognise and deal with bullying in our curriculum
  • Sports competitions against local schools
  • Crucial crew - training for our year 6 pupils from local emergency services
  • Daily lunchtime calm club, run by our teaching assistants to provide a quiet space during lunch time for children who want some downtime or to talk to a peer or adult about their feelings
  • Buddies for new pupils - Reception pupils and in-year transfer pupils are given a buddy to help them settle in
  • Visits to the local council offices to see local politics in action
  • Whole school theatre visit - we all go the pantomime together!

Coppice Valley Primary School is part of Red Kite Learning Trust, a charitable company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales with company number 7523507, registered office address: Red Kite Office, Pannal Ash Road, Harrogate, HG2 9PH

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