Curriculum
Offa's Mead Academy educates children from Reception (age 4-5) through to Year 6 (age 10-11) standard.
Our Curriculum Intent, Implementation and Impact are outlined below.
Our Curriculum Intent
The uniqueness of every child is recognised and valued at Offa's Mead Academy. As such, our curriculum embraces the community from which it exists, recognising and celebrating our mix of civilian and service families and our close connections with both Welsh and English heritage. Our Academy intent is to ensure that all of our children have exposure to and extensive knowledge-rich sequentially planned and ambitious curriculum taught by well-trained and supported teachers.
Our Curriculum is knowledge rich and gives every child the knowledge they are entitled to in order that they are well equipped for the next stages of their education. A curriculum crafted to ensure the essential building blocks of knowledge required are sequentially planned, our children learn more and remember more.
Our curriculum places importance on the specifics of what we want students to learn. Comprehension of vocabulary across our curriculum is carefully supported so they can process the essential knowledge.
Our curriculum is built with opportunities and time for learners to reflect or review their learning as central to the whole process. We carefully and deliberately sequence knowledge so that it is remembered.
Our curriculum is deliberately ambitious and promotes success in the present, all the time developing their experiences skills and knowledge, with the hope and aspiration that this will be added to in their future and we absolutely encourage and support curiosity!
Our curriculum is creative and offers children the right to experience, develop and practise creativity. Children interpret, experiment and make connections as they discover across our broad and balanced curriculum and beyond.
These key concepts drive teaching and learning across the school and decision-making at all levels. They drive a curriculum that is planned with golden threads of learning that connect in logical, substantive and sequential ways.
We help to develop skilled readers, confident writers, mathematicians, scientists, historians, geographers, musicians, artists, linguists, theologists, athletes, digital nomads, designers and technologists and we want them to be active participants in the world around with limitless ambition whilst embracing our core values.
Push the limits
Be unusually brave
Discover what’s possible
Be big hearted
We encourage our children to celebrate success and build on disappointment in order to develop resilience. We want our children to use their curiosity and the transitional nature of our school community to learn from and cooperate with others, to appreciate difference and embrace diversity. We believe that it is not just about what happens in the classroom, it is about the added value we offer to really inspire our children.
Our Curriculum Implementation
Our curriculum has been carefully designed and the learning opportunities and assessment milestones for each year group crafted to ensure progression and repetition in terms of embedding key learning, knowledge and skills. Offa's Mead Academy has developed a curriculum after a considerable period of consultation and evaluation. We carefully considered coverage and designed our curriculum to be broad and balanced meeting the ambitious aims of the National Curriculum as well as recognising the importance of recovery post pandemic and working to address any 'gaps' that may have occurred.
We have worked closely with leading curriculum developers including Opening World's Christine Counsell, a leading advisor and thinker on the curriculum in the UK and former Director of Education at Inspiration Trust. Ark Curriculum Plus colleagues, founded by Dr Helen Drury – a pioneer of teaching and learning for mastery in UK schools, and Vicky Cotrill from KAPOW, former Head of Primary Phase at Discovery Education as well of course as our own Academies Enterprise Trust Curriculum development team who have a wealth of experience in creating and developing curriculum content.
We offer discrete subjects rich in knowledge, allowing our children to gain a broad and deep understanding of each subject and know exactly which subject they are studying. Our curriculum is designed to embed transferable knowledge throughout. The outstanding quality of our classroom environments serves to stimulate and engage higher order thinking.
At Offa's Mead Primary School, we also recognise the importance of feedback, both adult and peer, as an integral part of the teaching and learning cycle, and aim to maximise the effectiveness of its use in practice. We are mindful also of the research surrounding effective feedback and research from cognitive science regarding the fragility of new learning. In response to this, our curriculum has strength in revisiting key vocabulary and concepts to embed the 'sticky knowledge' that remains in the long term memory.
Our teachers deliver a curriculum that is well-sequenced and underpinned by an understanding of how children learn. In addition our curriculum is based on a rich conception of knowledge that includes the skills and attitudes that contribute to every child's success.
Our curriculum is underpinned by Quality First Teaching:
All Staff have high expectations of themselves and all of the children
Teachers are expected to impart knowledge accurately and with enthusiasm
Teachers are expected to take into account prior knowledge and experiences and to build upon this in a systematic way
Highly focused lesson design with sharp objectives
High demands of child engagement with their learning
High levels of interaction for all children
Appropriate use of teacher questioning, modelling and explaining
Emphasis on learning through dialogue
An expectation that children will develop resilience and accept responsibility for their own learning and work independently
Regular use of encouragement and praise to motivate children
Our Curriculum Impact
As a result of our curriculum, all children are progressively more knowledgeable and skilled in a wide range of discrete subjects. They know more and remember more. Our children are able to recall facts and ideas appropriately; using their expertise to share this with others. They read competently to gain knowledge, as well as for pleasure, producing work of good quality across the curriculum. Children achieve well and can articulate their learning feeling prepared and ready for the next stage of their education.
Our curriculum also enables our pupils to become good citizens and demonstrate an appreciation for each other, the school community and the world. Our pupils will be respectful and will show tolerance and acceptance to those from different faiths and backgrounds.
We will measure the impact of curriculum through:
Pupil Achievement Data
Attendance
Behaviour
Pupil Questionnaires
Pupil Voice
Parent Questionnaires
Lesson Observations
Curriculum Reviews
Enjoyment of the curriculum promotes achievement, confidence and good behaviour. Children feel safe to try new things. The pupils will be able to work collaboratively with their peers and independently as inquisitive learners who are motivated to excel and who have a thirst for learning. The pupils will have a strong desire to embrace challenge and to be resilient learners.
