Curriculum Overview

At Shireland Hall, our core values of Honesty, Kindness, Respect, and Determination are the foundation of our curriculum and school life. These values are reflected in everything we do, ensuring we nurture successful, thoughtful, and engaged citizens ready to thrive.

A Values-Driven Curriculum

Our four core values are explicitly woven into the knowledge and skills taught in every subject:

• Honesty is developed in subjects like History, for example, where children learn to critically assess evidence and distinguish between factual accounts and propaganda when studying periods such as the Roman Empire.

• Kindness and Respect are fostered by focusing studies on the recognition and valuing of diverse cultures, traditions, and autonomy, for example, as explored in units like Roman Britain. In Geography, for example, we encourage a strong sense of community, teaching children to look out for one another and show respect for their resources and the school environment.

• Determination is celebrated through exploring how historical groups, for example, those in the Stone Age, demonstrated perseverance in finding new things and ways of life, highlighting the resolve required for human advancement.

Reading, Communication, and Community

We believe that a strong emphasis on reading is essential to ensuring children’s life chances. Our approach builds reading fluency and comprehension through systematic phonics instruction, whole-class reading sessions that explicitly teach specific reading comprehension skills, and immersive English writing journeys focused around a high-quality text. This ensures every child develops the literacy skills needed to access the knowledge-rich curriculum and the wider world.

Furthermore, we explicitly focus on encouraging children to communicate well, exploring differences, and building a strong community. The curriculum narrative is designed to help pupils understand the complexity of people's lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies, and the relationships between different groups, for example, when comparing different empires and societies in History. This focus develops strong communication skills, for instance, through project outcomes like creating a 'News Special' illustrated report in History, ensuring our children leave Shireland Hall ready to collaborate, articulate diverse viewpoints, and make a positive contribution to the world.

For more information about our curriculum, please contact: shpenquiries@gbshp.org

If you would like to find out more about any of the subjects we teach, please speak to your child's class teacher or email shpenquiries@gbshp.org