Curriculum

Our Curriculum

‘Purposeful, Practical and Powerful’ learning, inspiring our children to be remarkable.

As a federation, we are two small, rural schools with an ever evolving curriculum which responds to the needs of our learners and their interests by enhancing learning experiences and raising awareness from the local area to national and global arenas. Our part of the country is significantly less ethnically diverse than the UK average, has a narrower range of employment types and a higher proportion of part-time and seasonal work. To cater for the needs of our pupils we have developed a curriculum with a clear set of values and ‘drivers’ aimed at developing outward looking pupils who are able to engage in learning about themselves and have an understanding of the wider world and its complex cultures.

We work to prioritise the things we want our children to experience during their time with us, using the core 'drivers' of purposeful, practical and powerful, along with our trust-wide set of values, to underpin all areas of school life and to ensure our curriculum offer is enriched and personalised to our children and their families.

Our ambition is to deliver a genuinely ambitious, broad and balanced curriculum designed to provide children the benefit of a creative approach to learning, acquiring the key attributes of independence and resilience; in a school at the heart of the community.

We give ongoing opportunities to our pupils to apply their skills and knowledge in context, to enable success both within the curriculum and in wider life, ensuring they are supported professionally and pastorally in the modern world.

Curriculum Core Drivers:

1. Purposeful - making children well-rounded, considered and thoughtful individuals with a good breadth and depth of knowledge in many areas of learning via a truly cross-curricular pathway, ensuring children know what they are doing and why.

2. Practical - giving children opportunities to experience, explore and experiment practically, via many different media, across many different subjects enabling success both within the curriculum and in wider life.

3. Powerful - long-lasting learning, taking the children beyond their local experiences to a wider world of independence and discovery, which empowers our children to be remarkable!

Our Values:

Curriculum Intent:

Our curriculum provides children with the benefit of a creative approach to learning, acquiring the key attributes of independence and resilience, in a school at the heart of the community, maintaining the traditions and values of the local area, whilst allowing pupils the opportunity to be forward thinking and globally aware.

• Our Intent is for a purposeful curriculum, making children well-rounded, considered and thoughtful individuals with a good breadth and depth of knowledge in many subject areas combined with a range of life skills - children know what they are doing and why.
• Ours is a curriculum designed with ongoing practical opportunities to give pupils the chance to apply their skills and knowledge in context - enabling success both within the curriculum and in wider life.
• Ours is a curriculum designed to inspire powerful and long-lasting learning. With a balanced mix of skills and knowledge to ensure that the highest standards of education are evident in all areas of the curriculum and no areas are overlooked or undervalued - empowering our children to be remarkable!

Curriculum Content:

• Our curriculum broadly follows the National Curriculum, taught in a way to ensure it has suitable breadth, depth and relevance to provide an excellent education for all our pupils, helping them to achieve their full potential in all areas.
• Our curriculum provides high quality academic provision for all, but also delivers a wide range of opportunities in sport, art, music, drama and more.
• Our curriculum, through an ambitious RE, PSHE, SMSC and fundamental British Values programme, delivered through the curriculum, assemblies, schools trips, workshops and visitors, enables our pupils to both appreciate the wonderful things we have locally, whilst providing them access to and experience of lives different to their own.

Curriculum Delivery:

• Our curriculum builds on prior learning and interlinks ideas, theories and concepts wherever possible, across as many subjects as possible – cross-curricular approach.
• To ensure the subject are equally valued, we use effectively 2 books in which to work a maths book and a “Curriculum” book for all other subjects. This helps to ensure a truly cross curricular approach.
• Our curriculum is designed to give opportunity for pupils to apply their skills and knowledge in context, to enable success both within the curriculum and in wider life. We do this throughout the curriculum, but in particular through “Activity Weeks”, either at the start of a half term to spark pupils’ imagination into a topic of learning or at the end of a half-term to draw together various strands of learning into a cross-subject projects. To supplement these wonderful weeks, following feedback from staff, pupils and parents, in 2019/20 we are also launching “Fantastic Fridays” in which a carousel of different activities will take place on a Friday afternoon, led by different members of staff to give our children opportunities to take part in lots of exciting, practical and discrete curriculum focused sessions, which will also give them experience working with different children and different teachers.

Curriculum Experience:

• Our curriculum, with its multitude of different approaches and learning opportunities, provides our students with rich and rewarding experiences enabling them to achieve their potential in many different areas.
• Our curriculum links to real life outcomes, including social and economic aspects. We ensure at the start of a topic of learning our pupils establish what they already know, so that they can see for themselves the progress of knowledge and understanding increase over time.
• Our curriculum not only allows our pupils an understanding of what they are learning, but also why. We revisit in our classrooms, through dialogue and displays, the key questions of “why are we learning this and how can it help us?”.
• Our curriculum helps pupils to receive ongoing feedback, principally at the point of learning, about where they are and what they need to achieve next.
• Our curriculum promotes ongoing opportunities, high standards and expectations for all our pupils, through a clear behaviour system which focuses on reflection.
• Our curriculum brings to our children, who have limited exposure to different cultures, an ‘education with an international outlook’. We bring other cultures to them, giving them a rounder understanding of the world, and preparing them for the future in our changing society. Through planning a global dimension into our teaching, links can be made between local and global issues, issues that the children may have seen in the news and media.

Curriculum Impact:

• Our curriculum is designed to maintain tangible progress for all pupils, closing the gap for those children behind age related expectation and stretching and challenging the more able.
• Our curriculum is designed to be difficult, to challenge thinking and teach children to overcome obstacles – to build resilience and independence.
• Our curriculum which enables our pupils to evaluate their own attitudes to many diverse ideas and issues, as well as to appreciate that throughout the world people and children have similarities and differences.
• Our curriculum is monitored closely and progress is pushed and challenged – we want our pupils to do the best they can, not just in reading writing and maths, but in all areas!