Our Learning for Life Curriculum

Our Personal, Social and Health Education (P.S.H.E) together with our Relationships and Sex Education (R.S.E), enables our children to become healthy, independent, aspirational and responsible members of a diverse and ever-changing society.

At Mapplewells we teach these aspects of the curriculum as Learning for Life.

We strive to help our pupils understand how they are developing personally and socially, and support them to tackle many of the moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up.

An important part of Learning for Life is the ability to discuss and debate issues with clarity, and listen to peoples points of view, whilst understanding that you do not have to agree with them but recognise their point of view.

We strive to provide our pupils with opportunities to learn about their rights and responsibilities and appreciate what it means to be a member of a diverse society.

Our children are encouraged to develop their sense of self-worth by playing a positive role in contributing to school life and the wider community.

We aim to have a positive impact on both academic and non-academic outcomes for all pupils.

PSHE Content Map

Learning for Life Showcase

We take pupil voice very seriously at Mapplewells - our children love to have their say! We have various opportunities for children to give their thoughts and opinions and to be involved in many big decision making activities across school. 

Our common areas have lots of information displayed that the children have contributed to themselves, as well as showing groups such as the Diversity Leaders and our School Council.

We are proud of the diverse curriculum that we offer our children and make links to British Values and the 9 Protected Characteristics throughout our Teaching and Learning.  These are also displayed in every classroom as well as in our main hall. 

There is also information relating to safeguarding, antibullying and what children should do if they ever feel worried or unsafe. 

We use the Picture News resources as a comprehensive way of teaching children about the events of a the world in a very honest and factual way, but in an appropriate 'child friendly' way.  We believe it is important for children to be aware of things that happen in our world, even if they are not always positive events. It helps them to build a better understanding and respect of different people's ways of life and how events can impact people and their families. 

Picture News is always current and is taught weekly - as with other areas of the curriculum there are links to British Values, the 9 Protected Characteristics and the United Nations Rights of a Child. 

Please head over to our Picture News page (Part if the 'Children' section) which is updated weekly, with the most current news article. 

Our Learning for Life curriculum is taught from F1 right through to Year 6 and covers a wide range of topics across 15 strands, these include things like a healthy diet, hygiene, road safety, what to do in an emergency, relationships, economic wellbeing and many more.

Children will often evidence their learning in the Curriculum Enquiry books, but sometimes their learning may lend itself better to the children doing a practical activity, taking photographs, creating artwork, videos or presentations.  Every class has their own 'Floorbook' to help capture some of the fantastic ideas and contributions that the children make during our Learning for Life lessons. 

These are displayed in class and the children are very proud to show them to visitors or to sit and look through them together, discussing some of the experiences and opportunities that they have had.

Children learn about career options as early as F1...our nursery children were discussing different jobs and we were lucky enough to have lots of visitors into school to share their experiences of their careers with us.   We had illustrator Karin Littlewood in to share stories and give children the opportunity to create their own illustrations. 

We also had Olive's daddy to talk about his days in the Navy and his new job as a train driver.  Eve's mummy came in to talk about her nursing career.  The children enjoyed looking at the artefacts and getting to handle the different objects that the visitors brought in.