Our Curriculum Rationale and Statement

Context

Our school motto, ‘Committed to Excellence, Equality and Enjoyment’ underpins school life at Wykeham Primary School. We believe that every child is entitled to achieve success and we strive to provide the highest standards of learning for all our children.

Our curriculum is ambitious, and is designed and adapted to meet the needs of all our children. From the moment a child joins us in Nursery to the completion of their primary education, we ensure that we have mapped a path which prepares them to be confident, articulate and successful learners who are ready for the next stage of their education and their future life.

Our curriculum is designed so all children acquire knowledge, skills and experiences as they progress from one year to the next. Children need to know more, remember more and do more independently at each and every stage. It allows for breadth and depth of learning, offering challenge, personalisation and choice.

Many of our children arrive with us from low socio-economic backgrounds, many have English as an additional language, some have special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), and many are below national expectations for their age. To help children progress, we have ensured that our learning environment is rich in developing and promoting children’s oracy, reading, writing and maths.

Intent

We prioritise developing positive attitudes to learning and, in Early Years, we prioritise children’s social and emotional development, and listening and attention. Our curriculum design is based on a consideration of the contextual needs of our families, the local context and government requirements. 

 Our Learning Challenge Curriculum links to the prescribed National Curriculum and is set out in half termly units with an enquiry question that is linked to either History or Geography (drivers). The driver supports children’s acquisition of knowledge and skills and links closely with Literacy – to make secure connections, and continue to develop children’s knowledge, skills and abilities to apply what they know and can do with increasing fluency and independence.  All other subjects are taught discretely and where we can, clear links are made, taking into account our children’s contexts.

 The Learning Challenge Curriculum provides the following opportunities:

 Children acquire essential knowledge and develop skills necessary to become safe and responsible citizens;

• Children develop greater autonomy in their learning;
• Children develop critical thinking skills;
• Children develop their emotional and physical well-being;
• Children relate positively to themselves and others;
• Children manage conflict or risks in situations in an appropriate manner;
• Children develop enterprise skills;
• Children develop knowledge and a sense of self to reinforce their identity within the local and wider community.

Implementation

At Wykeham Primary School, the curriculum is driven by the Subject Leaders who have an overview of the breadth covered in their subject area from Early Years to Year 6. For each subject area, there are long-term curriculum overviews, medium term plans for every unit and knowledge organisers for most subject areas.

We enhance the prescribed National Curriculum so that our children are exposed to all the following in our Learning Challenge Curriculum:

• The teaching ensures that children enjoy and are active in their learning; have opportunities that allow them to develop and demonstrate their excellence and creativity. Teachers plan activities so that all children have the same learning objective. Children experience an appropriate level of challenge that enables them to achieve their potential and, where needed, they are supported to sustain their efforts. Children evaluate their learning against agreed and co-constructed success criteria.  
• Opportunities are planned across the curriculum to provide a broad range of experiences that help children learn and develop – in the classroom, through educational visits, and other extra-curricular activities.  
• The curriculum is developmental - that is, it builds upon children’s prior learning and achievements. Our teachers have high expectations of all children and ensure that children make progress whilst meeting their needs; enhancing their aptitudes; enabling them to discover and develop their interests and requiring them to think deeply. Children are given rich opportunities to develop their cognitive skills with increasing complexity.  
• We make clear links between different aspects of learning which support children to remember more, embed and apply their knowledge, skills and understanding – and, where possible, link aspects of the curriculum to the local and global community. Children understand the purpose and value of their learning and its relevance to their lives now and in the future.  
• We make excellent use of quality resources to differentiate the teaching and learning to meet the needs of all children. These include additional staff, practical equipment, a purposeful learning environment and empowering children to become autonomous learners. Children are encouraged to choose tasks that will challenge them to step even further out of their comfort zone.  
• Teachers utilise effective formative assessment strategies to adapt their teaching and activities to elicit children’s learning, provide positive feedback to move learning forward and activate children to take ownership of their own learning as well as one another as a learning resource.

Impact

For teachers to be able to adapt their teaching effectively, they rely on a range of formative assessment strategies  to check children’s understanding and termly summative assessments to check the knowledge children have and how much more they have remembered over time.

In the EYFS, every member of staff uses observational assessment to baseline children’s starting points and plan experiences that ensure progress. A concise tracking system enables teachers to measure our starting points against a national data set.

All children in Reception, KS1 and identified children in KS2 are taught phonics via a validated scheme. Rigorous and regular assessments inform teachers of the progress children make and inform our next steps in their teaching.

Children in Year 1 to Year 6 complete termly NFER assessments in Reading, GPAS and Maths. This enables us to track children’s’ age-related progress against a specific data set across a range of skills and allows leaders to track progress over time.

The Learning Challenge Curriculum supports our children to flex their ‘Wykeham Learning Muscles’ to instil a growth mind-set that allows children to welcome new challenges through a culture of learning that is enjoyable and stimulating for both children and staff:

For further information, please arrange to speak with our Curriculum Leads: Mrs. O'Donnell or Ms. Raymond.