CURRICULUM – ENTERPRISE

Skills Builder

Part of becoming ‘future ready’ is the development and mastery of the skills to communicate, solve problems, collaborate with others, be creative and manage ourselves and our working habits.  To explicitly teach and develop these skills, we use Skills Builder.  They have simplified these ‘life-skills’ into 8 essential skills that are key to being future-ready when children move onto further education as well as when they embark on their adult working lives.

Each skill is broken down into small, easy to understand steps which are taught explicitly in class, as well as referred to across the curriculum. Once a skill has been taught, the children are then provided with exciting, real life opportunities to use them in practical activities, games and larger projects.  These projects range from creating, marketing and selling chocolate bars to running a reporting company to create a school newspaper. Each project focuses on the skills that have been taught and works to combine and embed them into our daily actions. Use and practise of these skills is rewarded in our Friday celebration assembly and teachers value the development of these skills as much as the development of academic knowledge. 

Every year, in addition to the projects,  each child will visit a large company and work within the business setting, collaborating with their employees to complete tasks.  Over the past year, our children have visited multinational companies such as BP, TUI and Quintain and the charity Age Concern. These experiences give our children the opportunity to utilise the skills they have been taught and an amazing insight into the processes and responsibilities of a working environment. We have seen children flourish in these environments and have brought their ideas back and implemented into their learning.