Our curriculum in Years 3 and 4 is designed to stretch and challenge every girl by developing a rich and balanced knowledge-base and offering opportunities to apply this in practical ways.
Girls at this stage encounter a range of teaching styles, all of which aim to develop their higher-level cognitive abilities. Tailored feedback and target-setting help our girls to recognise what they need to do to improve and deepen their knowledge and understanding, while creative teaching and learning increases girls’ motivation, enthusiasm and engagement.
From Year 3 onwards, Science is taught by a subject specialist.
In Maths, girls continue to develop their mastery of mathematics through the “Maths – No Problem!” programme. In English, the girls focus upon deepening their grasp of the building blocks of grammar and lexis whilst at the same time enriching their outlook through the study of new and challenging texts and creating their own original compositions.
In Science, girls are taught by a specialist teacher from Year 3 onwards, with their studies based on the 2014 National Curriculum for Science yet enriched by plentiful opportunities for practical activities and knowledge-acquisition that go beyond the syllabus. This includes participating in our annual ‘Science Week’, hearing from visiting scientists and attending relevant visits to Oxford’s many science centres, woodlands and nature reserves, the Botanic Garden in Oxford and museums and sites of interest in London, Bristol and Birmingham.
Also in Year 3 the girls continue their studies in Mandarin. The language is taught by a specialist teacher with the aim of embedding a love of learning languages early on in life as well as of giving our girls a taster of the breadth of choice in languages that they will be experience in the Senior School (where the full range includes French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish, all of which can be studied to A Level).
