Foundation
Our Foundation Curriculum
At Two Mile Ash School, we are extremely proud of our creative and vibrant curriculum which contains termly inspiring “Learning Journeys”. Encompassing our foundation subjects, our Learning Journeys are a carefully planned thematic approach to teaching and learning designed to support children’s natural curiosity and stimulate their creativity. Learning Journeys offer children the opportunity to work in depth, giving them the time they need to reflect, consolidate and transfer their learning. Through rich cross-curricular, exciting learning experiences, our Creative Curriculum aims to deliver a twenty-first century education that will equip our children with the skills required to be independent and responsible citizens.
All our foundation subjects have been carefully planned and devised to ensure that each key objective is carefully sequenced, following our milestones, so that each pupil, year on year, will develop key knowledge and understanding to progress. Each skill is built upon year by year which allows the embedding of knowledge, giving pupils a wider understanding of the world around them and the knowledge, skills and understanding that they need to progress and achieve higher standards and prepare them for the next stage of education in order to lead fulfilling lives.
These documents give a more detailed understanding of the progression and structures across the foundation curriculum.
Useful Documents
Our Art Intent
At Two Mile Ash School, we believe that children should be able to express themselves creatively, by using a range of materials to create art in a variety of forms and effectively make use of art in their everyday lives.
Our Art Curriculum ensure the progressive development of knowledge and skills, whilst using rich vocabulary to help children develop ideas, master techniques and take inspiration from the greats, including architects and designers. Our children gain experience and skills of a wide range of formal elements of art in a way that will enhance their learning opportunities, enabling them to use art creativity in a range of subjects across the curriculum. Extending their creative experience through Inspiration days, collaborative whole school projects such as Take One Picture allow the children to further develop their artistic skills. As children move through the school, they are provided with opportunities to be critical of art and develop an understanding of how art both reflects and shapes our history.
Through our Art curriculum, children are exposed to a variety of local arts through dance, drama and musical opportunities that Milton Keynes offers. Our Two Mile Ash Arts offer will contribute to children’s personal development in creativity, independence, judgement and being able to talk confidently about their work while also confidently sharing their work and journey with others.
Links to our local community
At Two Mile Ash, we really value the artistic links to our community in Milton Keynes. The children learn about local artists, including Liz Lehy, who sculpted the concrete cows, and ‘The Leaping Man- a sculpture on one of Milton Keynes many roundabouts, which was sculpted to honour Greg Rutherford (a former student at Two Mile Ash.)
Continuing to value our local community, we also use the Milton Keynes Gallery, to link with our arts offer, as we feel it is very important the children learn about the importance of art galleries, as well as sharing a love of art.
Challenge in Art
We challenge our children through an art curriculum designed to make more use of the local environment, area and school- the children will be required to find and identify places and situations significant to them, which they can observe and work from. They will access additional challenges rather than activities that ask them to imagine and interpret local stories, events and themes in visual and tactiles terms. With their ability and commitment, they should be required to find out about artists, designers and craftspeople that have some local connection and complete a portfolio on them.
In addition to this, a pedagogy rich approach will encourage the children to use higher levels of thinking to apply knowledge and skill together in more abstract ways than is taught. The children are given the opportunity to extend their skills and create pieces when attending extra-curricular art clubs throughout the year. By attending Art Club, children from different year groups investigate a wider variety of artists, that contrast those being studied, as well as a wider variety of techniques. We challenge further through higher level skill progression such as lino printing in addition to print making skills before independently selecting which technique to use and reasoning why and how.
As a school community, Two Mile Ash children have also been challenged through a yearly competition held by The National Gallery in London. Each year, children are challenged to observe, analyse, question and interpret based on a given painting. Take One Picture competition encourages children to use their higher level of thinking to apply knowledge and skill across the whole school curriculum, using artistic techniques. Two Mile Ash has celebrated fantastic results when taking part in the competition and has been successful in having artworks displayed in the National Gallery in both 2021 and 2023.
Take One Picture
Since 2019 we have submitted artwork to the National Gallery as part of their initiative Take One Picture. Every year we have 2 art days where the entire school is off timetable. We introduce the painting chosen by the gallery to all children across the school promoting a child led artistic investigation and then creation based on the painting. We have had our artwork displayed in the National Gallery both in 2021 and 2023 and Miss Baldwin and Mr H have led school visits to the gallery. It is such a fantastic opportunity and our children create artwork, writing, dances, sculptures, reports and even political displays based on the paintings chosen by the gallery. It is so important to see the whole school becoming involved from our Year 3s all the way up to Year 6 and every staff member too! We have had gallery opportunities where children have seen work produced by different year groups and external visitors have come into school too to share their expertise and help us to create. There is a real buzz around school while we become fully immersed in works of art and we are very keen to continue exploring paintings each year. Please see below where the powerpoint presentations of the work produced are displayed so you can come on this artistic journey with us!
Our Computing Intent
The computing curriculum at Two Mile Ash aims to give all children the opportunity to build skills that will support them in the future. They will be able to embrace and utilise technology effectively and safely in order to develop their learning within the subject. We want pupils to be able to develop life skills that give them the opportunity to adapt their knowledge to everyday life, where technology is integrated into the world around them.
Children will become more autonomous and confident learners with their use of technology through the implementation of a whole school curriculum offer allowing them to access more devices and aspects of technology that is embedded in an interdisciplinary way. We encourage our staff to adapt their lessons to meet the needs of their children, accordingly, allowing all children to be included and successful learners.
An integral part of computing at TMA is being able to stay safe online, equipping our children with the knowledge they need to make the best use of the internet and technology in a safe, considered and respectful way, so they are able to reap the benefits of the online world.
Computing at Two Mile Ash is not only taught as a stand-alone lesson but presents the opportunity to enrich other subjects across the curriculum, giving them the tools to best express their understanding of their learning. This ensures that our children become digitally literate – able to use, and express themselves through communication technology as active participants in a digital world.
Challenge in Computing
Mastery in computing means acquiring a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject. It is demonstrated by how skilfully a child can apply their learning in computing to new situations in unfamiliar contexts.
Concepts are developed in logical steps with particular attention given to fundamental concepts. This ensures that all children can master concepts before moving to the next stage, with no pupil left behind.
Pupils are given the time and opportunity to fully understand, explore and apply skills and ideas in different ways, in different situations and in different subjects, this is where the true challenge is applied. This enables pupils to fully grasp a concept and understand the relevance of their learning.
Useful Links & Videos
Our Design Technology Intent
Design and Technology at Two Mile Ash School is an inspiring, creative and practical subject. Our Design and Technology curriculum encourages children to learn to think creatively to solve problems both as individuals and as members of a team. We teach them to be inspired by real world opportunities and relevant problems, identifying needs and developing a range of ideas and solutions in a variety of contexts. By researching past and present technologies, where possible meeting real industry workers and applying knowledge learnt across other areas of the curriculum, children build their confidence, resilience, practical and analytical skills. Skills are taught progressively to ensure that all children are able to learn and practice in order to develop as they move through the school including product research, disassembling and building products, making prototypes, testing, designing and evaluating. Furthermore, they learn to overcome challenges and improve designs and products. We aim to, wherever possible, make cross curricular links with relative subjects such as mathematics, science, engineering, computing and art. . By the time children reach Year 6, they would have had experience of food technology, textiles, design and construction; they should be confidently performing tasks and applying their knowledge, understanding and an increased level of skills as they progress through the school. They will be on the way to becoming innovators and will have used a range of tools, resources and materials, including the use of computing, to create effectively constructed and aesthetically pleasing results. This, along with a strong focus on the importance of evaluation, allows children to adapt and improve their work, providing them with a strong foundation for the next step of their learning and a key skill for life.
Challenge in Design Technology
Challenge in DT can be done through many ways for example, moving the children on to higher level skills in lessons (eg in sewing lessons, asking them to practice more challenging stitches once they have mastered the basic stitches). We also challenge children to evaluate their designs and projects.
Projects and competitions
Our Language Intent
At Two Mile Ash School we recognise the significance of learning a foreign language and learning about other cultures. Our children come from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds, speaking a variety of languages, so learning a foreign language is an important part of being a member of a multi-cultural society.
Our children have the opportunity to learn a language throughout their time at the school to enrich their learning journey with us and open up their curiosity of diverse cultures in the world that they live. At Two Mile Ash we teach French, with our curriculum offering the opportunity to learn how to listen, read, speak and write in French, as well as the chance for our children to develop their awareness of worldwide cultural similarities and differences.
Children have a French lesson weekly, which is in line with the national curriculum objectives for language learners. We have also strengthened the children’s opportunity to succeed by introducing French phonics learning into all year groups, which is primarily to enhance French reading skills, but also helps to progress the children’s French speaking and writing skills.
Across the year groups, topics covered in lessons include: numbers, colours, months, days of week, greetings, family, house and home, in town, food and drink, transport, emotions, the classroom, clothes and hobbies.
It is intended that when children leave Two Mile Ash, they will have a natural curiosity and confidence to explore languages, other countries and cultures. We are confident they will be engaged and prepared to continue language learning at Secondary School.
Challenge in Language
Children are challenged to extend their sentences using conjunctions (which reflects our English writing curriculum too!) Additionally, children are challenged to see the grammatical patterns and rules for verbs, adjectives and masculine/feminine nouns. Furthermore, children are encouraged to extend their vocabulary beyond what they learnt in the lesson by using a French dictionary.
Helpful links
European Languages day is celebrated annually on 26th September.
During our French lessons we love to sing songs to help us to learn! You could practise your favourite French songs at home by using the links below.
Our Geography Intent
At Two Mile Ash, our geography inspires children to learn about the world in which they live and how it has changed over time.
Our Geography Curriculum focuses on acquiring facts and knowledge as well as developing geographical skills which then in turn help them to understand larger global concepts such as humankind, place, significance, processes and change. The teaching of Geography follows the National
Curriculum and is integrated within our engaging Learning Journey topics, which include ‘Inspiration days’ to immerse the children in their learning. Great emphasis is placed upon acquiring geographical knowledge and vocabulary as well as making links between their current and prior learning.
The geography element of our school curriculum aims to inspire pupils with a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people, which will spark an interest in the subject, not only within their TMA journey, but throughout their future education. Our curriculum starts within our local community of Milton Keynes, before exploring the rest of Europe and finally branching out to the wider world to compare and contrast the way we live to various places in other continents, such as Africa and the Americas. Our geography curriculum enables children to develop a sense of place, whilst exploring, investigating and understanding the man made and natural processes that impact on our planet. We aim to equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.
As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world should help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments. Through cross-curricular links, children use skills learnt in other subjects to enhance their geographical learning. We want our children to gain confidence and practical experiences of geographical knowledge, understanding and skills. We achieve this through a variety of day trips, residential trips, local fieldwork and extra-curricular clubs. When children leave Two Mile Ash, they will have developed the skills and knowledge to be successful geographers in secondary school and beyond.
Challenge in Geography
Challenges are available for all lessons. Challenges vary depending on the content of the lesson- Some examples are; Comparing learning in that lesson to another place they have previously learnt about, thinking of cause and effect (e.g. if there is an earthquake what is the effect on the people), and adding more detail to the knowledge (e.g. Describing how time zones work.)
Links to local community
https://www.theparkstrust.com/
This amazing local charity has lots to offer schools, families and individuals from Junior Park Rangers, nature walks, litter picks, and a whole host of monthly activities.
Our History Intent
At Two Mile Ash School, History teaches children about the world in which they live and how it has changed over time. We view History as a way to inspire pupils’ curiosity about the past. History presents children with the opportunities to develop fundamental skills of enquiry and questioning, through a variety of engaging learning journey topics each year. Our history curriculum aims to bring history to life, in order to help pupils to understand chronology, change over time and the diversity of societies. We emphasize learning from the past in order to shape our futures. Through History, children learn to make comparisons and links between the past and modern times and discover how and why things have changed.
Our History Curriculum focuses on acquiring facts and knowledge from a wide range of topics. At Two Mile Ash, we work in a chronological order when learning about History. Children progress from early civilisations including the Stone Age and the Ancient Egyptians, to the Tudors and then learning about both World Wars in Year 6. We emphasise the importance of historical knowledge and develop a wide range of vocabulary over our time at the school.
History at Two Mile Ash includes a range of inspiration days where the children are fully immersed in the topic they are studying. We enable opportunities for our children to explore the past through the use of a variety of sources of information to find clues and evidence and take part in discussions with their peers. We also aim to provide a variety of learning experiences including role play, research sessions using primary and secondary sources, class discussions and debates as well as historical visits. When children leave Two Mile Ash they are confident in using the skills they have developed to become successful historians.
Challenge in History
Children are challenged in history to explore both sides of an argument when exploring historical events. Additionally, children are pushed to assess the validity and usefulness of a source – why is it useful? Why is it not? Furthermore, children are encouraged to make links across different periods of times and assess similarities and differences.
Links to the local community
Living Archive
An excellent website sharing the history and heritage of Milton Keynes.
Heritage Open Days
Every September thousands of volunteers across England organise events to celebrate our fantastic history and culture. It’s your chance to see hidden places and try out new experiences – all of which are FREE to explore.
Related Videos
Music & Performing Arts at TMA
Music and Performing Arts is in everything we do here at TMA. We do a production in each year group, in which absolutely everyone gets involved. It could be that you love singing, dancing or acting, maybe you’d love to be part of the stage crew, helping with lights or music tech – everyone is super important when it comes to putting on a successful production. We also do a whole school production in the summer term, we hold auditions and rehearsals over the spring and summer to put a really spectacular performance together.
Music is everywhere too! There are instruments you can learn as a whole class, from ocarina and recorder in lower school to ukulele and samba drumming in upper school. And if you’re interested in learning a musical instrument like the clarinet, flute, trumpet, violin or guitar, we have peripatetic music teachers and clubs to help you do that.
Normally, every year group has a singing assembly each week, and I use those to teach songs of all sorts; even songs that help you learn about history, geography, celebrations and maths! If you really love singing, then Harmonize is the club for you. It’s our choir: we sing, perform and love every second! Harmonize perform at lots of different events over the school year, including Young Voices at the O2 Arena in London.
If you’re looking to learn more about singing technique and really push yourself, it’s a fantastic club
Links to Local and National Community
This year, we are taking part in several local events which will be held in the summer term. We will be taking part in the Young Voices Biggest Sing in February, helping them to break the Guinness World Record for the largest simultaneous singalong. We’ll be taking part in the MK Primary Music Festival and we have plans for productions in the summer term, so watch out for announcements!
Contact Harmonize@tmaschool.com for more information about joining our choir. For more information about peripatetic music lessons, such as prices, availability and instrument hire, please email Music@tmaschool.com
Challenge in Music and Performing Arts
Our most able musicians are carefully identified: a child can show greater depth in several different aspects of music, and so we are mindful that our more able children can vary depending on the specific areas. We stretch and nurture our more able musicians in several ways, from encouraging them to use their main instrument alongside classroom-based equipment, explaining their thinking behind the theory, demonstrating their knowledge through questioning and deepening their understanding through quality practice.
Useful Documents
Useful Videos
Two Mile Ash School aims to inspire all pupils to develop a love of physical activity and sport.
Through high quality physical education and whole school values outlined in our creed, Two Mile Ash School aim to nurture confident, resilient pupils who strive for their personal best. We listen to our pupil’s desires and needs and provide them with a variety of active experiences and clubs. We want to aid our pupils in developing the values and skills to celebrate their own and others’ successes.
We aim to ensure that our delivery of physical education allows all pupils the skills and mindset to leave Two Mile Ash School with the capabilities to be successful in sporting challenges and active lifestyles at secondary school and beyond.
Two Mile Ash School strive to educate both our pupils and families to develop a greater understanding on how to live healthy lifestyles and make healthy choices. We have strong links with local clubs and partnerships within our community to ensure pupils receive opportunities to access physical activity and competition.
Through high quality physical education and whole school values outlined in our creed, Two Mile Ash School aim to nurture confident, resilient pupils who strive for their personal best. We listen to our pupil’s desires and needs and provide them with a variety of active experiences and clubs. We want to aid our pupils in developing the values and skills to celebrate their own and others’ successes.
We aim to ensure that our delivery of physical education allows all pupils the skills and mind-set to leave Two Mile Ash School with the capabilities to be successful in sporting challenges and active lifestyles at secondary school and beyond.
Two Mile Ash School strive to educate both our pupils and families to develop a greater understanding on how to live healthy lifestyles and make healthy choices. We have strong links with local clubs and partnerships within our community to ensure pupils receive opportunities to access physical activity and competition.
Our PE Intent
At Two Mile Ash School, we believe that Physical Education (PE), physical activity & school sport plays a vital part of school life and our children’s future health and well-being. It is therefore important our children understand the importance of leading a healthy, active lifestyle to prepare them for secondary school and beyond.
Our intent is to provide an inspirational, broad and balanced PE curriculum that ensures ALL children develop a love of physical activity. We aim to harvest this joy through the enhancement of existing skills, the learning of new skills and the introduction to new sports, clubs, school teams and external clubs.
Two Mile Ash School believes that regularly participating in physical activity and sporting activity is a key element of developing a school in which pupils are proud of the community in which they belong. Therefore, great emphasis is placed upon providing additional sporting opportunities beyond the ‘classroom’. Our extra-curricular programme consists of many after-school clubs, inter-house and intra-school competition and festivals as well as directly supporting local clubs within Milton Keynes.
It is our intent to fully deliver and build upon the aims of the national curriculum for PE to meet the needs of our pupils. The aims of PE national curriculum (2022) are:
- develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities
- are physically active for sustained periods of time
- engage in competitive sports and activities
- lead healthy, active lives.
We believe this links directly with our school’s vision & values, and is another way in which we positively engage with our local community and are active citizens within it.
Challenge in PE
Using the STEP Principal for the delivery of PE, we ensure all pupils, regardless of ability and needs, are able to access learning at the appropriate level of challenge.
S- Space (distance/ height/ size/ location)
T- Task (rules/ roles/ progression/ conditions/ complexity)
E- Equipment (What is it being used for?)
P- People (Groupings/ how are people working together?)
The STEP principle also applies to more able children, allowing additional challenge to be applied to individuals and groups where appropriate.
Our extensive extra-curricular offer to children allows opportunities for the more able to flourish in competitions against other schools at district, county and national level.
Our PSHE Intent
PSHE is an crucial part of the curriculum at Two Mile Ash School. It is completely intertwined into in our children’s everyday learning. Children at TMA are exposed to three main areas of PSHE throughout their time here with us: Health and Wellbeing, Living in the Wider World and Understanding Relationships – with the aim that overtime children will become confident individuals, successful learners and responsible citizens. During our PSHE lessons, children acquire the knowledge that will enable them to make informed decisions about their wellbeing, health and relationships and to build self-empowerment.
Knowledge and skills are carefully mapped and planned for, ensuring that each year group revisits and builds upon prior learning. Through our weekly PSHE lessons, as well as wider cross curricular approach to teaching PSHE, children are taught how to keep themselves safe, physically and emotionally resulting in the acquisition of knowledge and skills, which enables children to access the wider curriculum. We provide our children with opportunities for them to learn about rights and responsibilities and appreciate what it means to be a member of a diverse society. Our children are encouraged to develop their sense of self-worth by playing a positive role in contributing to school life and the wider community.
Challenge in PSHE
The PSHE curriculum has been developed to challenge our children in the way that they act and how they think and process information. When a concept such as ‘healthy living’ is taught, the children are challenged to think about themselves, their families and those within in their community using higher level questioning; ‘why’ and ‘how’, using their prediction skills to show their understanding of the consequence this can have on our mind and our body. They are then further challenged to utilize their problem solving skills in different scenarios, ensuring that they are being empathetic to individual circumstances – such as being diabetic – when divising a solution.
Useful Links & Videos
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/five-ways-to-help-childrens-wellbeing/zfb2d6f
Religious Education at TMA
At TMA , RE has a significant role for the development of our pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. We believe that it is an essential area of study which ensures that children are well prepared for life in a world where there are a multitude of viewpoints. Therefore, we promote respect and open-mindedness towards others with different faiths and beliefs and encourage pupils to develop their sense of identity and belonging through self-awareness and reflection. We aim through teaching RE to engage pupils in an enquiry approach where they can develop an understanding and appreciation for the beliefs, cultural practices and influence of principle religions, faiths and worldviews in the local, national and wider global community. We aim to give the children a vast knowledge and deep understanding across a wide range of religions and beliefs by exploring their commonality and diversity. We promote the children to use progressive skills to be reflective of the religions that are taught and link this to their own personal beliefs, meaning and purpose. In addition to this, we encourage children to ask significant questions about religion and demonstrate an excellent understanding of issues related to the nature, truth a value of religion. Above all, we foster an safe environment where children are free to share beliefs, values, practice and way of life.
Celebrating Religious Festivals
As a school, we are very proud of the diversity in our community. As a result, we have decided to celebrate a religious festivals throughout the academic year. Within these celebrations, children will be learning all about the key traditions and values of each religion as well as understanding why each festival is so important to that religion.
Challenge in Religious Education
Challenge in RE is going beyond the purely factual to an RE pupil that questions and explores the impact on the life of a believer today. The challenge of utilising questions to explore the beliefs and practices deepens pupils knowledge, understanding and questioning of these religious ideas. This builds into learning that is a process of discovery and chunked into starters, parts and plenaries that link together and enable progress in knowledge, understanding of similarities and differences and in the application of religion and belief, which supports building in the challenge throughout all parts of the lesson.