Curriculum

At Ashton-under-Hill First School, we work in partnership with parents and the community to encourage an eagerness to learn through: curiosity, resilience, friendship and respect. We work together as a team, promoting kindness in a caring environment, to support every child to achieve their very best in order to live and breathe our motto:

Shaping Bright Futures Together

Our curriculum strives to develop excellence and is continuously evolving to ensure it is best suited to the needs of our children and is aligned with the National Curriculum. This allows children to receive a high-quality curriculum that is broad and balanced to enable them to experience a range of subjects and develop their interests and learning journeys. 

We aim to provide opportunities for our children to develop the essential knowledge, skills and values to prepare them for the next stage in their education, aspire to reach their potential from whatever starting point, and ultimately be equipped to succeed within their community and the wider world. We deliver a broad curriculum that seeks to build on prior learning through inspiring and relevant topics that offer enrichment opportunities beyond the classroom, that give meaning to learning and connect to previous experiences.

At Ashton Under Hill First School, the children’s personal development is important to us. A strong commitment to our school’s values promotes and develops independence and an enthusiasm for learning while reflecting life in modern day Britain. Speaking and listening skills are developed through promoting the use of rich vocabulary in a range of contexts. We believe that all children are able to access the opportunities on offer and achieve the very best they can. We recognise that no child can be judged as successful on academic ability alone, we aim to develop the whole child and aim to offer them access to a wide range of opportunities to discover their strengths.

Please look at the individual subject areas for more details of the curriculum we offer. 

Programmes we follow

Core subjects 

English

• The Systematic Synthetic Phonics programme we use is Little Wandle to ensure consistency in Early Reading. Our reception children learn and are assessed in line with the Early Years Foundation Stage. We use No Nonsense Spelling as a resource for spelling lessons and Sing Up! as a planning tool for music lessons.
• To develop early writing in EYFS, we use Drawing Club with both Pre-schoolers (if they want to join in) and Reception.
• From Y1 upwards we use Book Writes as a starting point, using quality texts to explore a range of genres lead by a grammar focus to develop writing skills.
• Across the school for handwriting, the Letter Join programme is followed.
• In Key Stage 2, Ninja Squares and Place Value Punctuation support the leaning of grammar. The Twinkl spelling progression word lists form the basis of our spelling programme in conjunction with the age related spelling lists and common exception words.

Maths

• EYFS follow the Mastering Number programme and White Rose.
• In Maths, we use White Rose as our starting point, using the small steps to formulate planning. This is enhanced with a variety of different resources.
• Children in Years 1, 2 and 4 also follow the Mastering Number Programme to develop their number sense skills.

  Non-Core Subjects

• To support PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) we follow the SCARF program which is supplemented with the Mental Health Champions programme in upper Key Stage 2.

• Our History planning is influenced by the Key Stage History materials.
• We follow the Worcestershire Agreed Syllabus for RE (revised 2025).
• Computing follows the Teach Computing Programme. 
• The Music planning uses the Charanga programme as a starting point.
• We chose French as our Modern Foreign Language and use the Francais Francais resources which are supplemented with other materials if needed.
• PE Hub is used to plan progression for the teaching of PE. 

Our other subjects areas use a bespoke programme that shows a progression of skills and knowledge throughout the school. 

As we are a school with mixed age classes, our planning follows different cycles in the non-core subjects; in Key Stage 1 it is a 2 year cycle, in Key Stage 2 it is a 3 year cycle. Click on the link below to see the long term plan for Topic the school as an example of how this works.

Here is an overview of our whole school Topic map with the associated Key Drivers (see below for more information.)                              

Curriculum Drivers

Throughout the year, each half term block has a set theme which runs through all the teaching and learning for that term. These Curriculum Drivers focus on a wider theme to expand the scope of the learning for the pupils on that period and widen the horizons of the children's understanding of the wider world outside of our 'Ashton bubble'. Links are made through a variety of subjects, depending on the theme, and opportunities are given to develop awareness of the themes through their everyday learning.

Here are the themes  of the Curriculum Drivers we learn about:

 Assessment

We use a range of assessment techniques to gauge children's performance and progress throughout the school. Please access our Assessment and Marking Policy for more details.

                                      Assessment and Marking Policy 2025-26 

School Values

School V

Curiosity Resilience Working Together Friendship Respect

Our school values drive the ethos of all we do at Ashton Under Hill First School. They are at the heart of all our reward and behaviour management systems. We constantly refer our values to reinforce learning behaviours and social interactions to promote wellbeing across all we do in school. Every week in our Family Assembly, children's successes are celebrated in accordance with our values as they receive Star Awards for demonstrating a school value that week. Parents are invited to celebrate alongside their child and this adds to our wholistic approach to the awareness of what we stand for at Ashton Under Hill and gives a wider audience to core values of the school.

British Values

British Values are integrated into our curriculum across the school when and where there is a natural and logical link. The weekly Headteachers assembly incorporates a British Value to regularly promote the different values to ensure the children are aware of the different aspects of what British Values encompass. To aid this the anacronym DR TIM is used to help them remember the aspects – Democracy, Rule of law, Tolerance, Individual liberty, and Mutual respect.