Curriculum Enrichment and Extension

We offer a wealth of exciting and often brand new experiences which complement our curriculum and broaden horizons. Our enrichment activities are carefully planned to ensure that knowledge, understanding and skills are built on and developed across a broad range of subjects and that children have an opportunity to follow their own interests and talents and, indeed discover new ones!

Educational Visits and Visitors

At Sevenoaks Primary School we strongly believe in the power of educational visits in bringing learning to life and enhancing interest, enthusiasm and achievement for all children. Our visits aim for children to acquire an awareness of the world around them, an understanding of how life works and a language with which to explain it all. Educational visits link closely to our class themes and include visits to theatre, museums, farms and the countryside. All year groups have at least two external visits each year.

We also supplement the visits with visitors, shows who come into school to bring learning to life in extravagant and dramatic ways! On Egyptian day, Year 3 clad in togas and self-made jewellery, welcome an Egyptian into school who shares with them her food, making soap, writing on papyrus and drama. Other year groups will have at least one other special day each year in which costumes, drama and creativity bring their topic to life in a special way.

Our Year 6 children have the opportunity to experience a residential visit. The adventure of spending time away from home with friends provides boundless opportunities for children to develop skills such as collaboration, independence and resilience.

Performing Arts

A chance to perform. All children have the opportunity to perform each year. Key to this are our class assemblies in which children share their learning through drama, narration, singing, dance, reading poetry and text. Families and friends are invited to come and watch the children’s performances. Costumes and props add to the excitement.

Christmas is also a time when every EYFS and KS1 child is involved in a nativity that involves costumes, lighting, staging and props. The audience of family and friends are always delighted by the performances and the children terribly excited and proud of their show! KS2 children lead wonderful services with dramas, readings, music and song at their yearly Carol Concerts which are also enjoyed by family and friends at our local church – St Johns’.

The big performance of the year is our Year 6 production. Every Year 6 child takes part and they produce a full show with interval that is performed for the school during the day and across two evenings for families and friends. This is always highly professional and receives excellent feedback. Please see our photo pages for past production.

Our KS2 school choir is extremely popular and all children from Years three to six are welcome to join. The choir performs as part of ‘The Young Voices Choir’ at the O2 every other year as well as performing in local churches, in our whole school assemblies and at our Open Evening. They have set up a partnership with a local care home, ‘Emily Jackson’ and have termly visits to sing and chat with the residents. We even perform locally at the Bat and Ball station when the major turns on the Christmas lights! Our budding KS1 choir also meets weekly and performs at our Open Evening.

We have a talented dance troupe, who meet weekly after school. Our dancers enjoy performing for the school community at our Open Evening and at the local ‘Stag’ theatre in the Sevenoaks’ schools ‘Love to Dance’ shows each year.

Theme Days in School

Here at Sevenoaks Primary School, we like to extend the curriculum with our theme days. These give the children a break from their regular timetable and class curriculum in order to explore something different along with the rest of the school. Assemblies and Display boards are used to share ideas around these and celebrate them. They focus on:

a subject eg Science Week or French Day
a book eg our Termly Big book Days
Something topical eg Olympic Day including a visiting Olympian to talk with the children and lead them in sports activities.
A part of the National Calendar eg Anti-bullying Day or as we called it – Friendship Day!

Life Skills and Knowledge

We build other skills and knowledge based learning beyond the curriculum, into our yearly offer, which will equip children for life outside school. These include:

Fire Safety talks from the fire service which take place every other year and are developmental as children move through the key stages.
First Aid training for Year 6
Road safety awareness using Transport for London resources.
‘Safety in Action’ visit for Year 6 covering water safety, road safety, electrical safety among other things.
Rail Safety for Y5&6 using Network rail videos and resources.
Assemblies focusing on sun safety, stranger danger and road safety for the whole school.

Clubs and Competitions

Our extra-curricular activities nurture academic habits, skills, emotional intelligence, athletic prowess and creativity. They are well planned, well-resourced and largely staffed by our own excellent team. Having superb grounds and ample space in school including a separate dining hall and hall, we are able to run an extensive range of clubs before and after school as well as at lunchtime. These include performing arts, information technologies and sports as well as languages, chess, curriculum based clubs such as the news team and science club.

We also take part in a wide range of competitions, matches and tournaments with the aim being to give as many children as possible the opportunity to take part.

A Part of our Local Community

The community in our school:

Having designed our new build to be used for lettings, evenings, weekends and in the holidays, there is always something going on at SPS. Adults attend exercise classes, the local Symphony Orchestra rehearses here and for children, there are numerous weekly clubs eg Born to Perform Drama school and holiday clubs that take place regularly.

Our school in the community:

As the largest primary school in Sevenoaks, we make sure we are represented at many of the activities and competitions happening locally.

We host a visiting author each year during the Sevenoaks Literary festivals and invite Year 5 and Year 6 children from four other local schools to join us for the talk.
We take part in the schools summer reading challenge that the library runs encouraging as many of our children to take part in order to head up the leader board!
We have a close link with St John’s church. Our Carol Services take part in the church and Father Robin comes to us to lead our Harvest and Easter services in school.
We take part in the Chance to Dance show at the Town’s theatre – The Stag
We visit local restaurants, nature reserves and shops as part of our curriculum visits eg visiting Sevenoaks Book Shop for World Book Day to spend the vouchers given.
Our choir visits a local Old People’s Home – Emily Jackson and has participated in the turning on of the Bat and Ball lights with the Mayor.

What have we been up to recently?

Our Year 5 news team have been sent to find out! Follow this link to read their reports on just some of the exciting activities and events our children have been involved in: News Team