Our Curriculum

The quality of the school’s curriculum makes the biggest difference to a child’s learning. With this in mind, we have ensured that the curriculum is progressive and allows children to build on new learning, acquiring new knowledge and skills 

When designing the curriculum, the staff team focused on the following questions:

• - What do we want the children to know?
• - What do we want the children to know how to do?

We aim to enrich every child’s school experience by creating an environment where they are encouraged to succeed and be the best they can be.

We use Cornerstones, a widely recognised curriculum programme, as a basis for our curriculum, with adaptations made to the local context and children’s needs. We have created a curriculum that is broad, balanced and ambitious for all. It is exciting, relevant and meaningful, responding to the needs of the children. Knowledge and skills are intertwined, as neither is more important than the other.

Learning is arranged into termly topics as this enables the children to make clear links between different aspects of their learning, therefore reducing their cognitive load. Our values based education means that the curriculum is being further enhanced, for example all of the topics are based around questions, linked to the value of enquiry. This allows children to ask questions and lead their learning as we recognised that the children need to get more involved in their learning and develop their curiosity. The school’s values drive the curriculum and determine how it is taught. 

Intent

Our intent for the ambitious curriculum that we deliver is for the children to develop skills and personal qualities for lifelong learning, preparing them to make an active contribution to society. We will give them real life experiences, so that they can see the relevance their learning has in the real world, whilst developing a rich and deep subject knowledge. We aim for the children to become mentally and emotionally happy and resilient citizens, ready for the challenges of the 21st Century. 

Curriculum Organisation 

For each term, we organise the learning into a topic. Subjects which naturally link to this theme are included so that the learning is relevant and connections can be made between learning. For the structure of a topic, we base it upon the four phases which supports and develops our curriculum aims

The purpose of each phase is:

What this looks like varies, but includes such things as:

Long term plans

The curriculum is arranged into cycle A and cycle B due to mixed age classes. This academic year 2022-23 is cycle B.

The long term plan for each of the classes is below.