Our Curriculum Intent
We intend for our children to be well-prepared for their next school and for their future as global citizens who understand that they can make a difference to the world.
As Penny Tassoni states, ‘We can help to close the gap and support children who are at risk of disadvantage by providing them with a wider range of experiences inside and outside the classroom’ (P. Tassoni, ‘Reducing Educational Disadvantage’ 2016). With this in mind, our Early Years curriculum aims to provide a full programme of rich experiences for children to broaden their knowledge, skills and horizons, enabling them to develop higher levels of vocabulary, to play more purposefully and to forge new thoughts.
As children move into Key Stage One, our curriculum continues to place value on the children’s current experiences and to build on what they already know through carefully planned knowledge and skills progression documents. We ensure that the knowledge taught is drawn from the National Curriculum and we place a high emphasis on the key vocabulary that the children will learn. We do try to make links across the curriculum if possible, because we believe that learning is not always just learning about a subject in isolation, but applying skills across different subjects. We also know that learning is more likely to be securely embedded if children are able to revisit it and practise it within different contexts.
Our intention is to try and learn about the community in which the children live so that we can represent our diverse community through the curriculum. Through our History and Geography curriculum, our intention is to ensure that we are providing the children with an understanding of their locality and where they come from. In the words of Ben Newmark: ‘Our curriculum should whisper to our children “you belong. You did not come from nowhere. You are one of us. All this came before you, and one day you might add to it” (B. Newmark ‘Why Teach? 2019).
By placing a high emphasis on the use of story in our curriculum, we also intend that our children develop empathy for others and become problem solvers, having to think about what it means to be human. As a Christian school, we want the children to value and respect the beliefs and cultures of others, learning about what it is to be a human being. Whether this is learning from mistakes made in the past in history, learning about the decision a character makes in literacy or finding out about the Christian values of love and forgiveness through the example Jesus taught in R.E- the children are engaged through story.
Please click here to read our Learning Charter.
Please click here to read our Curriculum Policy.
