Intent

We believe our curriculum will enable children to become inspiring change makers and global citizens of the future. We aim to inspire a quest for learning throughout life that is marked by enthusiasm and empathy, ensuring flourishing for all.

 

The four cornerstones of our curriculum are:

Implementation

 

Alumnis C360 and our four cornerstones; Academic Success, Character Education, Community and Innovation, are the framework to our curriculum. The curriculum is everything that the children experience in and around the school, planned and incidental, caught, taught and sought.

The ‘caught’ refers to the culture of the school and the inspirational influence of a positive ethos.

The ‘taught’ refers to the educational experiences the school provides to equip children with the vocabulary, knowledge, understanding, skills and attributes they need to be successful and ready for the next stage in their learning. The ‘sought’ refers to the opportunities that generate the formation of personal habits and character virtues.

We expose our students to powerful knowledge and provide education with character:

Character Education

 

Character Education is the foundation of our curriculum. Children have a wide range of opportunities to practise their character virtues through all curriculum subjects, enrichment and wider experiences.  Character education is woven throughout, enhancing the curriculum to ensure children have experiences beyond the classroom, providing them with opportunities to apply their skills and knowledge in a wider context. Linking all the building blocks of character through four core character virtues:

Our aim is to deliver a knowledge-rich curriculum that is cohesive, cumulative and purposeful. We want our students to become engaged, happy and self-sufficient world citizens, benefiting from and contributing to our local, national and global communities. We make it our mission to foster a love of learning and a sense of agency, inspiring change makers of the future, whatever their background or starting point. For our most disadvantaged students we focus on removing barriers to enable access to the full curriculum and secure good progress, learning without limits. 

Our curriculum comprises a creative and thematic approach to learning that is mapped to the National Curriculum to ensure comprehensive coverage of national expectations.  The learning journey enables subject-specific content and ensures there is clear progression, consolidation and extension of skills and knowledge. 

We build in opportunities for children to return to areas of learning, which allows them to gain a deeper understanding of the skills and processes within subjects. The planning process involves the children assessing their previous knowledge and encouraging them to pose their own questions throughout each project.

Curriculum

At Woolacombe School we think it is essential that our pupils are taught an exciting and broad curriculum which inspires a love of learning. We use the planning and assessment support provided through Curriculum Maestro's Cornerstones as a tool to design, deliver and manage our curriculum. It enables us to deliver the curriculum through interesting topics. These topics use effective learning sequences which ensure progression and the sequential development of skills and knowledge.

 

Our curriculum is a two-year rolling programme, separated into the three learning stages - KS1, LKS2 and UKS2. Each unit of study is truly cross-curricular, which means that the children are totally immersed in the topic each term, gaining a breadth of knowledge. Each topic has geography or history as its driving subject, with companion projects for science and the arts. The curriculum objectives and skills are sequentially taught across the phases, meaning that the children build on strong foundations as they progress through the school. The topics are intentionally designed and chosen to support this

The approach is based on the following four key components of learning:

At the Engage stage, children:

  • Gain memorable first-hand experiences, such as going on a visit or inviting a special visitor into school
  • Get an exciting introduction to a new project
  • Begin researching and setting enquiry questions
  • Get lots of opportunities to make observations
  • Develop spoken language skills
  • Take part in sensory activities
  • Have lots of fun to fully engage with their new project

At the Develop stage, children:

  • Improve their knowledge and understanding of the topic
  • Develop and practise their new skills
  • Compose, make, do, build, investigate, explore, write for different purposes and read across the curriculum
  • Research their own questions and those set by others
  • Follow new pathways of enquiry based on their interests
  • Complete home learning activities that support their learning

At the Innovate stage, children:

  • Apply skills, knowledge and understanding in real-life contexts
  • Lead their own learning through individual and group projects
  • Solve real or imagined problems using everything they’ve learned
  • Be inspired by imaginative and creative opportunities
  • Revisit anything not fully grasped at the ‘Develop’ stage

At the Express stage, children:

  • Become the performers, experts and informers through presenting their work in a variety of ways
  • Share their achievements with parents, peers and the community
  • Evaluate their own learning
  • Link what they have learned to where they started
  • Celebrate their achievements

Impact

We monitor and track the impact of our curriculum through:

  • Triangulation of a range of information including planning, children’s books, online platforms, pupil voice, marking and feedback. 
  • Progress from starting to end points of projects. 
  • The knowledge and understanding the children retain over time leading to the standards that the children achieve by the end of each year.
  • The quality of work, progression of skills, depth of knowledge and understanding presented in the children’s books, classroom displays, learning journeys, exhibitions and social media feeds.
  • Attainment and progress including national tests and standardised assessments.
  • The development of children’s oracy - their ability to articulate their learning.
  • The completion of the 6 inspiring changemaker challenges and progress towards pupil agency .
  • The develop practical wisdom; knowing the right action at the right time and becoming flourishing individuals who contribute towards a flourishing society.
  • The development of character virtues that have far-reaching effects beyond the school gates, ensuring children become global citizens of the future.