At Benedict Primary School we believe in putting children and their needs first. All pupils are supported to make good progress and no child is being left behind. For each child, there is an expectation of participation, fulfillment, and success where teaching and learning are characterized by ambitious objectives, challenging personal targets, rapid intervention to keep pupils on an upward trajectory, and rigorous assessment to check and maintain pupil progress. Our focus is and always will be on the children, providing them with the high standards in education they deserve.
Benedict Primary provides an environment where all children are engaged in learning that develops and challenges them as well as excites their imagination. We provide opportunities for all children to fulfill their potential through a commitment to high standards and excellence within an engaging, broad, and enriched curriculum. We are committed to ensuring each child develops as a confident, enthusiastic, and effective learner.
Benedict Primary is committed to providing a caring, friendly and safe environment for all pupils so that they can learn in a relaxed and secure atmosphere. We take seriously our responsibility to protect and safeguard our children. Ours is an open school. This means that anyone who has worries about another child should seek support from us. We work in partnership with other agencies when there are concerns about a child or young person's welfare.
We want to transform the lives of our pupils and their communities by helping them achieve their utmost, celebrate their talents, and become the best that they can be. We focus on developing the whole person by not only concentrating on high academic expectations but also focusing on our pupil’s key life skills and personal and social development.
We aim to build a lifelong love of learning in our pupils and a set of moral values that will enable them to make a positive contribution to the community and a rapidly changing society. We welcome diversity as a strength and a learning opportunity. Through sharing cultures, experiences, and languages, rich and deep friendships can be forged in school and at the school gates which can outlive a school career.
The national curriculum for English reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially, and linguistically. Spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing. The quality and variety of language that pupils hear and speak are vital for developing their vocabulary and grammar and their understanding of reading and writing. Teachers should therefore ensure the continual development of pupils’ confidence and competence in spoken language and listening skills. Pupils should develop a capacity to explain their understanding of books and other reading and to prepare their ideas before they write. They must be assisted in making their thinking clear to themselves as well as to others and teachers should ensure that pupils build secure foundations by using discussion to probe and remedy their misconceptions. Pupils should also be taught to understand and use the conventions for discussion and debate. All pupils should be enabled to participate in and gain knowledge, skills, and understanding associated with the artistic practice of drama. Pupils should be able to adapt, create and sustain a range of roles, responding appropriately to others in the role. They should have opportunities to improvise, devise and script drama for one another and a range of audiences, as well as to rehearse, refine, share and respond thoughtfully to drama and theatre performances.
Statutory requirements which underpin all aspects of spoken language across the six years of primary education form part of the national curriculum. These are reflected and contextualized within the reading and writing domains that follow. It is essential that teaching focuses on developing pupils’ competence in both dimensions different kinds of teaching are needed for each. Skilled word reading involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Underpinning both is the understanding that the letters on the page represent the sounds in spoken words. This is why phonics should be emphasized in the early teaching of reading to beginners (i.e. unskilled readers) when they start school. Good comprehension draws from linguistic knowledge (in particular of vocabulary and grammar) and on knowledge of the world. Comprehension skills develop through pupils’ experience of high-quality discussion with the teacher, as well as from reading and discussing a range of stories, poems, and non-fiction. All pupils must be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain knowledge across the curriculum. Reading widely and often increases pupils’ vocabulary because they encounter words they would rarely hear or use in everyday speech. Reading also feeds pupils’ imagination and opens up a treasure-house of wonder and joy for curious young minds.
It is essential that teaching develops pupils’ competence in these two dimensions. Besides, pupils should be taught how to plan, revise and evaluate their writing. These aspects of writing have been incorporated into the programs of study for composition. Writing down ideas fluently depends on effective transcription: that is, on spelling quickly and accurately through knowing the relationship between sounds and letters (phonics) and understanding the morphology (word structure) and orthography (spelling structure) of words. Effective composition involves forming, articulating, and communicating ideas, and then organizing them coherently for a reader. This requires clarity, awareness of the audience, purpose, and context, and an increasingly wide knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. Writing also depends on fluent, legible, and, eventually, speedy handwriting.
