Wider Curriculum Opportunities, Enrichment & Cultural Capital
What is Enrichment?
Education is more than just mastering English and mathematics – it is also about activities that extend children’s learning through new experiences and opportunities. Enrichment opportunities help provide children with a rounded, culturally rich education through activities which enhance their learning and provide them with the opportunity to try new things and develop new skills.
Enrichment at Carcroft
Our curriculum extends beyond the National Curriculum and includes a wide range of enriching experiences and opportunities both within and beyond the school day. This includes an extensive programme of after-school clubs, that support the core curriculum offer, as well as those which develop specialist skills, such as coding and art whilst also extending the range of children’s experiences (Cultural Capital). A primary focus of our curriculum is to raise aspirations, engender a sense of personal pride in achievement, and provide a purpose and relevance for learning.
The school takes pride in providing a highly inclusive environment, where learners demonstrate high levels of enjoyment in their education and make good progress across the curriculum. Children at all levels are helped to achieve their potential. Those who are most able are challenged and supported through being offered tasks which provide opportunities for greater depth and those who find learning more of a challenge are encouraged and given targeted support to embed skills, to develop at their own pace or simply to learn in a style that best suits their individual needs.
In addition to our exciting and stimulating cross-curricular themes, we also provide a range of further enrichment opportunities to enhance children’s learning wherever possible.
These include:
Promoting Positive Mental Health & Wellbeing
At Carcroft School, we aim to promote positive mental health and wellbeing of every member of our school community and recognise how important mental health and wellbeing is to our lives, as is physical health. We recognise that children’s mental health and overall wellbeing can affect their learning and achievement.
A key aspect of our role in school is to ensure that children can manage times of change and stress, and that they are supported to reach their potential or access help when they need it. We also have a role to ensure that children learn about what they can do to maintain positive mental health, what affects their mental health, how they can help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues, and where they can go if they need help and support.
Positive wellbeing is promoted through the wider curriculum and all school activities. Through a carefully planned Crew approach to PSHE, RSE and Growth Mindset our pupils are helped to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills and understanding they need to lead confident, healthy, independent lives, and to become resilient, informed and responsible citizens.
In addition, whole school approaches such as daily assemblies and circle time sessions are used to further develop the pupils’ knowledge of strategies. Whole school events are held including, Mental Health Awareness Week in May, daily CREW sessions and Anti-bullying Week in November. During these events, the focus is on mindfulness and resilience; teaching strategies for dealing with anxiety; and coping with change and transition.
What do we do at Carcroft School to support children’s emotional well-being and mental health?
Carcroft School is committed to creating a happy, caring and supportive environment. As well as a learning environment, the school ensures there is a positive, supportive and inclusive ethos where children can thrive and achieve their personal best. Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) and our Values-based education is central to the curriculum across the whole school.
- PSHE & RSE assists pupils to cope with the changes at puberty, introduces them to a wider world, manage transitions and enables them to make an active contribution to their communities. The concepts covered in PSHE include identity, managing feelings and emotions, relationships, change, resilience and being healthy, which includes physical, emotional, and social well-being.
- Physical Education The school employs Sports Coaches who work across the school to ensure high-quality sports is offered to all children. We also offer a range of school sport clubs and endeavour to ensure all children access a sporting competition across the year.
- Healthy eating is promoted throughout the school through the Crew curriculum. Carcroft changemakers are also actively involved in designing lunch menus each term.
- Disadvantaged and vulnerable children are closely monitored through a ‘Championing’ approach and ensuring barriers to learning are removed, and enrichment opportunities are encouraged and supported.
- World Mental Health Day and Mental Health Awareness Week is celebrated across the school and ongoing events and activities are planned for the whole school community.
Educational Visits and Residentials
Fieldwork and visits are an integral part of the education of children at Carcroftt. We value the opportunities such visits offer our pupils and the commitment of staff and adults undertaking them. Fieldwork aims to bring curricular learning to life by providing first-hand experience.
When our children reach Year 6, they are invited to stay away from home in preparation for secondary school and take part in a residential visit. These are planned to provide new and exciting experiences which include orienteering, climbing, abseiling, archery and lots more.
Expert visitors into School & Workshops
Experts have a valuable role to play and can contribute to many aspects of the life and work of the school. They deliver talks, workshops and full day activities across a wide range of subjects, giving pupils access to outside experiences and expertise. Visitors provide a link with the wider community – children have the opportunity to work alongside artists, musicians, authors, health professions and others.
Music, Art & Drama
Carcroft School provides opportunities for children to take part in a wide range of musical activities and performances where they are encouraged to sing, compose, and work creatively with sound. Through active listening, pupils’ awareness, understanding and appreciation of a wide variety of music are developed. A range of opportunities are provided within and beyond the curriculum for children to showcase their musical skills and talents, for in Year 4 and 5 are all provided with the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, the guitar, throughout Wider Opportunities programme. All pupils are given the opportunity to showcase their talents in our annual Carcroft’s Got Talent Show.
Pupil Parliament & Voice of the Child
Volunteering is an activity that everyone can get involved in and benefit from. At Carcoft, we promote and encourage pupils’ active citizenship and positive contribution to the school and wider community. We offer lots of opportunities for pupils to take on new responsibilities and be involved in successfully supporting the life and work of the school. These include elected representatives on our Carcroft Changemakers School Council where children are responsible for working alongside the School Leadership Team to improve our school.
Older pupils can also apply for positions such as Playground Buddies, House and Sports Captains and Assembly Monitors and Librarians. Within classes, children can volunteer to take on various responsibilities including book monitor and line leader. All children are able to contribute to our pupil newspaper, The Hadley Wood Voice which is produced on a half-termly basis.
Involving children as volunteers is very empowering:
- It helps them to develop self-confidence
- It promotes self-esteem
- It develops their skills as leaders
- It involves them in making their own decisions
- It gives them a voice in the life and work of the school
- It offers them opportunity to take responsibility
- It enables them to make a positive contribution to the work of the school and wider community
- It helps to prepare them for the challenges and opportunities of adult and working life
Pupils tell us that they enjoy the opportunity to volunteer to help make their school an even better place to be and rising to the challenge that additional responsibility brings.