Reading is powerful! At Copthorne Prep, we understand the astonishing benefits for children – stories open up the world to children. They build imagination, empathy, bring comfort, fun and happiness. Stories can show children life in a different world to their own. Our English lessons focus on the power of reading. Through the use of powerful literature, we build vocabulary, understanding and writing skills. Learning to write for a purpose motivates children and we are proud of the imaginative and compassionate writing our children produce.
Our topic-based approach to learning creates a vibrant and enriching learning environment. Arriving at school to find a lost penguin stimulates imagination and gives us a reason to research about the polar regions to find out just what that penguin needs to survive. The collaborative learning opportunities in our humanities lesson provide a safe place to learn how to work in a team. We know that creating a vibrant learning environment creates curiosity about the world past and the world around us.
By linking the arts to our humanities work, we enthusiastically produce art we are proud of. Frequently we look at the art of a famous artist to get ideas about creating as we know that we can learn from others. During our art lessons we are encouraged to respond thoughtfully to the work our friends produce and from a young age we learn to encourage each other. Our singing, music and recorder lessons help further a love of the arts and we value simply having fun making music together.
An important part of learning at Copthorne is to do with how we relate to others. Our religious study lessons have an emphasis on learning about religions so that we grow to understand each other more and learn how best to show respect. We are a diverse school and celebrate this by learning about the celebrations of others.
We value the time to learn about ourselves, our physical and mental health and how to relate to others. Weekly we take time to focus on developing our communication skills and discuss how to work successfully with others.
We celebrate the innate curiosity of children. Our science lessons provide opportunities to find out how things work and have a real emphasis on developing observation and thinking skills. We learn best by doing and our children love the science experiments and exciting activities we set up for their learning. If you came along to one of our forest school sessions, you would get a great example of how we create magical, engaging activities to help children learn to cherish the great outdoors. Learning about the health benefits of the great outdoors as well as the importance of sustainability is vital!
We seek opportunities to link maths to our curriculum. “Maths is everywhere” activities are popular with our children. By using a hands-on approach, we are building mathematicians who have a real understanding of number. Our goal is to develop robust problem solving and reasoning skills. Our strong school-home link means parents are regularly informed on their children’s progress and next steps are made very clear. We make practising our instant recall maths facts fun and the competition with our online maths games is steep!