At all ages, the ability to listen and respond appropriately to others is a critical life-skill and key to accessing and developing children’s learning in school and the world around them.  

We use talk in the classroom daily, we model and teach children to articulate their answers, questions, opinions, arguments, descriptions and explanations, as well as express their feelings.  

We encourage children to use the English language articulately in order to communicate with their audience effectively. We regularly use talk to clarify and solidify thinking and learning through cooperative learning structures in the classroom.  

We provide real life contexts throughout the curriculum that provide opportunities for children to adapt their tone and style for a particular audience, from presentations to performances and role plays to debates. Talk is very much seen as a key to success.  

At GEMS Metropole we have a passion for books and the written form; this is at the heart of our teaching from early reading until the children are ready for secondary school.  

We believe that children must develop a love for reading in order to motivate and develop their own reading fluency and comprehension skills. Children at GEMS Metropole are able to access all that books have to offer through high-quality shared class texts and book talk that give them opportunities to develop their skills as well as a vivid imagination and advanced vocabulary. Children can choose their own book to take home from an array of individually levelled reading books, including books from the Oxford Reading Tree, ORT Phonics, Usborne First Reading and Project X reading schemes. This is encouraged across the school as the most useful and enjoyable element of home learning.

GEMS Metropole has three well-stocked libraries where children visit regularly and can relax and enjoy a book. Our children read regularly to teachers, learning support assistants and volunteers in a group or 1:1 environment, but also relish the opportunity to hear a magical tale read by their teacher.  

At GEMS Metropole we value writing as a fundamental communication skill that enables our children to share their creativity, ideas and emotions; and this starts right from day one.  

Children are given rich experiences to encourage and develop a love and purpose for writing. In English lessons, we use high quality texts as a stimulus and as a model of writing excellence for them to emulate. Throughout the primary school we use Talk 4 Writing to support early stages of the writing process. This develops sentence structure, imagination and creativity through using images and symbols. Our aim is to make writing purposeful and meaningful so we will often link it to the current topic that our children are immersed in. Editing is an important skill our children develop, refining their work and striving for their absolute best to meet the needs of the audience is a key skill. We are exceptionally proud of what our children achieve and therefore celebrate their writing through publishing and displays.  

The British Curriculum focuses on teaching of the following three fundamentals:  

• Becoming fluent  in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.  
• Reasoning mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.  
• Solving problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.  

Across the school, we teach  Maths in a practical way giving children opportunities to explore number relationships using models, images and manipulatives including Numicon, Dienes and Cuisenaire Rods. Once children have a secure understanding of mathematical concepts, we challenge them to solve more abstract and complex problems through offering a variety of rich, mathematical tasks as opposed to moving them on to new content. Application in a range of concepts, reasoning and exploring mathematical ideas are a key part of learning and challenge for our children.  

In lessons we link maths concepts to the real world beyond the classroom so that children develop an appreciation of the application of maths for future employment and real life. We don’t use a particular ‘maths scheme’ as such, but we do use a variety of published and online resources including White Rose. Our teachers are very skilled at structuring lessons and tailoring material to embed learning and provide stretch and challenge.  

Science at GEMS Metropole contributes significantly to pupils’ enjoyment and understanding of the world and their place within it. This awareness is to extend as far as the pupil is able from being aware of themselves and their immediate environment through to an appreciation of the natural and man-made world within Science. This area is important as it contributes to a broad, balanced, differentiated, and relevant curriculum but will also link across the curriculum.  

Science is made accessible to all pupils through a focus on practical work, first-hand experience and special events designed to inspire and engage learners. Teaching key skills such as making observations, predictions and evaluation of first hand observations are of equal importance to knowledge and understanding.  

In the primary school, science is taught by class teachers and is incorporated throughout other subjects and the relevant topic at the time. This ensures a holistic approach in the acquisition of scientific skills and knowledge.

At GEMS Metropole we follow the Moral, Social and Cultural Studies (MSC) curriculum as published by the Ministry of Education in the UAE. This curriculum focuses on three domains; moral, social and cultural. There are 10 strands that fit into these domains; Character morality, individual and community, history, geography, sociology, economics, information literacy, information processing, heritage and civics. MSCs outcomes are incorporated across all areas of the curriculum from Year 2 to Year 6 for 40 minutes each week. In addition, some of the time will be integrated throughout discovery lessons when necessary. When teaching MSC, we aim to contribute to the making of better global citizens through the development of human capital capabilities, promoting the values of tolerance and respect and being responsible for looking after the place where they live as well as the wider world. 

We provide students with an awareness of the world around them to help them navigate and be successful in the future, making informed and reasoned decisions as members of a tolerant and culturally diverse society. This will include deepening their understanding of social, political and economic systems. At the end of each term, students will complete a project to enhance their MSCs knowledge and skills.