Birdham Bridges

Our “Birdham’s Bridges” experiences help increase our pupils with developing:

1) cultural capital – knowing more about the wonderful world we live in
2) aspiration – learning how to achieve success in life
3) competitiveness - trying your best to succeed
4) performance & presenting skills - being confident in front of others

The document below shows how these activities are allocated across our classes. 

At Birdham CE Primary School, we understand that deep knowledge is developed in a variety of different ways: e.g. through exposure to excellent teaching and a high-quality curriculum, as well as collective and individual hard work.

Part of developing deep knowledge in a specific area of learning is having a broad knowledge of the world so that links can be made between different ideas (or concepts) in the long-term memory. Although a large proportion of factual knowledge of the world can be taught in the classroom, children also need to 'experience' the world too. Factual knowledge and experiences can then be linked together to strengthen concepts in the long-term memory.

Experiences also help us develop our memory in a different way to factual knowledge. They help us understand what something ‘feels’ like. This helps us develop empathy and a knowledge of how others might feel in a certain situation – all part of becoming a caring, resilient and respectful young person.

We are constantly reviewing our evolving curriculum, and as such have created a series of experiences within our curriculum which we call “Birdham’s Bridges”.  These experiences ensure we take time to pause and look around, enjoy the moment and feel the atmosphere of amazing world around us. They include experiences such as:

• trips to our local and wider communities
• visits from organisations and inspirational individuals
• in and out-of-school competitions
• performing arts
• presenting work to others

Our biennial trip to the London O2 venue for the Young Voices choir event.

Most years we find an excuse to host and create a street party.  One year we had our 200th Birthday celebration, followed just a few yeas later by our 50th!  Honestly! Ask if you can't quite work out that riddle!!  Our last party was of course to celebrate King Charles III's coronation.