Curriculum

Three CORE areas of experience.

The Curriculum

curri1 A combined Primary and Secondary school, such as Dover Court Preparatory School, covers a period of time in your child's life which has several very important stages of development.

The Curriculum serves to help to make sure that all the differing needs of your child are met as he or she passes through those individual stages of development.

The Curriculum is designed to help your child develop and apply more and more skills. It will match new learning experiences to the appropriate level of understanding for him or her and will ensure that the whole range of learning activities that he or she experiences has balance and cohesion.

Your child will have three CORE areas of experience.

The three core experience are English, Mathematics and Science.

English

Mathematics

Science

We aim to enable your child

To grow in confidence as he or she recognises the power of his or her own language.
To take pleasure in its effective use.
To be sensitive and tolerant of the language of others.
To develop the highest levels of competence in SPEAKING, LISTENING, WRITING and READING.
To realise that all the ways human beings COMMUNICATE are crucially important to all learning and development.

We aim to enable your child

To acquire a sound understanding of mathematical CONCEPTS.
To use and extend that understanding in PRACTICAL ways.
To develop the skills needed to handle with ease the properties of NUMBER, ALGEBRA, SHAPE, MEASUREMENT and LOGIC.
To use GRAPHICAL and STATISTICAL representation as and when they are appropriate.
To look for ways to use mathematics in other areas of the school curriculum.
To realise that with these attributes, which are the basis of the LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS, the real world becomes much more interesting to explore and live in.

We aim to enable your child

To develop his or her senses by DIRECT EXPERIENCE. To use SIGHT, TOUCH, TASTE, SMELL and LISTENING skills to acquire accurate data from the world in which he or she finds himself or herself.
To develop a sense of PROPORTION, PERSPECTIVE, INTUITION and HYPOTHESIS.
To use as and when appropriate, the scientific skills of OBSERVATION, INVESTIGATION, INTERPRETATION, INVENTION and HYPOTHESIS.
To recognise that having such a bank of emerging SCIENTIFIC and TECHNICAL SKILLS and KNOWLEDGE he or she will be equipped to DESIGN, CONSTRUCT and EVALUATE practical solutions to real problems.

Your child will have other wide and varied landscapes of LEARNING and ACTIVITIES to journey through.

curri2 These form the FOUNDATION SUBJECTS of the Dover Court Curriculum.

History
Geography
Music
Art
Physical Education
Technology

History and Geography are often interwoven in PROJECT and THEMATIC work called HUMANITIES.

curri3 Arts (Creative and Expressive) and Physical Education are CENTRAL EXPERIENCES.

Teachers offer other aspects of learning which are an integral part of the LIFE OF THE SCHOOL.

These aspects extend beyond the normal class lessons and include MUSIC GROUPS, SPORTING GROUPS, EDUCATIONAL VISITS and COMMUNITY CARING.

We use these aspects to enable your child to make CHOICES for personal growth and pleasure. A large, invisible umbrella covers your child's life in his or her school, and all the school work and activity that he or she does. It is called THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM and can be described only by THE SPIRIT of the people, YOUNG and OLD who work, play and live here. It is FELT rather than seen and we believe it is the most real and most important part of the time we spend as a group together.

Humanities

Central Experience

The Hidden Curriculum

We aim to use Humanities to enable your child

To understand the human CONTEXT of the world in which he or she lives.
To come to terms with the development of his or her own personality.
To recognise that each individual needs to have a framework of MORAL and SPIRITUAL dimensions to make real sense of the world and his or her place in it.
To understand the nature and value of the places and ways of people NOW and in the PAST.
To learn how to become CONSCIOUS STEWARDS of the ENVIRONMENT and its RESOURCES.

We aim to use these subjects to enable your child

To explore his or her imaginative MIND and BEING in order to engender SENSITIVITY and DELIGHT.
To take part in Drama, Painting, Drawing, Craft, Pottery, Music, Dance and Movement knowing the ways he or she can use them as powerful forms of EXPRESSION and COMMUNICATION.
To develop his or her potential in gymnastics, games and swimming.

Being part of this group enables your child

To become especially AWARE of himself or herself as an individual.
To develop awareness of, and respect for, a whole range of individual differences within other people.
To discover that FEELINGS are much the same for all people, young and old.
To discover that it is NATURAL for human beings to be ANGRY, HAPPY or SAD.
To understand that GROUPS who have learned TRUST, SUPPORT, CARE, COOPERATION, SELF-KNOWLEDGE and KNOWLEDGE OF OTHERS can, with RESPECT, make ALL DIFFICULT THINGS BETTER.