Curriculum

Curriculum Overview

Woodlands Primary School

Curriculum Statement

At Woodlands, our curriculum has clear educational purpose, is delivered imaginatively to engage, inspire and enthuse children, is broad and balanced and has measurable educational value. Creative approaches are used to shape a curriculum that meets the requirements of the National Curriculum and contains substantive knowledge (the content that teachers teach as established fact), declarative knowledge (facts or information that need to be stored in the memory), disciplinary knowledge and skills, (understanding how knowledge is established, verified and revised) and procedural knowledge and skills (knowledge of methods or processes that can be performed- knowing how to apply declarative facts.) As a school, we do not view the acquisition and application of knowledge and skills in isolation, but as interwoven competences that develop perseverance & resilience and ensures that pupils build their knowledge in a systematic and progressive manner. It enables children to develop knowledge and skills simultaneously and learning is organised and sequenced within other learning, rather than being presented as consecutive blocks (spaced interleaving).

Curriculum Intent – what we want our pupils to know and be able to do at each stage within their primary education and beyond

At Woodlands, we believe it is the needs of children and our school community that should determine the emphasis of what is taught, as well as subject specific content driving the curriculum. It is important that we have the highest academic aspirations for our children and that they learn, make excellent progress and achieve well within our Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum (EYFS) and the National Curriculum from year 1-6. But it is understood that children need much more than this to become responsible, kind, tolerant citizens, confident decision makers and creative thinkers. It is our intention that our children understand that learning will make a difference not only to their lives now, but also in the future and as such, is a lifelong skill. Our curriculum is purposely designed to ensure progression of skills and knowledge within all subjects and is based on summaries of educational evidence and research outlined within the EEF (Educational Endowment Fund) to effectively enhance attainment and wider outcomes for all pupils, at all levels. Having established our ‘Curriculum Drivers’, the factors and values that will shape the curriculum, (Possibilities, Enquiry/Knowledge of The Wider World, Community/Diversity and Enterprise) we can ensure that we are able to balance children’s needs with the EYFS and National Curriculum, ensuring the content is contextually relevant to the children, fulfils statutory requirements and provides pupils with the ‘knowledge and cultural capital’ to succeed in later life. We strive to give our pupils a voice and the opportunity to engage in an array of different issues, current affairs and topics, helping to further shape the curriculum as members of the Woodlands Safeguarding Team, School Council, Eco Council and the Junior Road Safety Team.

Implementation – how we sequence, teach and assess our purposefully designed curriculum.

Our long-term overviews illustrate the specific subject content, based around a thematic, cross curricular approach, for each year group. Within the EYFS, these plans form the basis for enquiry-based project work. The plans for all year groups, have been created to ensure both contextual and thematic connections are clear, allowing children to develop critical thinking and reflect on concepts and ideas and learn and work together. Our curriculum can be described as both cumulative and spiral in nature. To ensure that it is well structured and sequenced, progression documents, that have been specifically designed by school leaders, allow teachers to plan with precision. These documents are sequenced to ensure that progression and balance is achieved, whilst clearly outlining the end goals expected for each subject across the year groups and key stages. By teaching concepts in the context of multiple subjects at once, time is used efficiently allowing opportunity to explore subject content with increased breadth and depth. The curriculum is also enriched with planned experiences, visits, assemblies, curriculum theme days, outdoor learning, sports, clubs and workshops.

We foster in our classrooms, a climate where children are seen as active and involved in their learning, engaging with materials and lines of enquiry that enable them to incrementally build their knowledge, skills and understanding. Teachers create rich contexts of discovery so that pupils enhance their learning; about themselves and the wider world. Themes are not abstract or too far removed from children’s experiences and staff ensure that content relevant and accessible to all of our children. Our pedagogical approach enables staff to track pupil understanding of knowledge and the progression of skills, allowing for repetition and rehearsal of concepts year upon year, ensuring learning is meaningful and long lasting. This ensures children have opportunities to build on and develop previously taught skills, when new learning is introduced. The links are taught explicitly and teachers use retrieval practice in each lesson (the children know this as AFL), to ensure teaching is adaptive so that all children are supported or challenged as appropriate. This helps improve children’s memory and recall, leading to a more confident application of skills and an increased ability to transfer existing knowledge to new concepts and new situations. Leaders ensure that lessons are planned and taught systematically and consistently for example, reading is taught across school using proven strategies that have accelerated progress and ensured reading attainment, in all key stages, is good or better. Where gaps in learning are identified or where it is clear that children are not ‘keeping up’, effective, rigorous interventions are quickly implemented to ensure rapid progress so that all children can attain and achieve. Teachers skillfully encourage children to use additional meta cognition strategies such as checklists, knowledge organisers, modelling, thinking aloud, evaluating and editing work and supportive questions. We work to develop a growth mindset for all our pupils, so that they believe that their ‘brain power’ can be developed, as this leads to increased effort and is associated with the development of self-efficacy and resilience, which we recognise as important in all facets of life, leading to higher academic achievement. All staff work closely with the Inclusion Team to identify and implement strategies and targeted interventions that support our most vulnerable pupils. For a small minority of pupils, this may involve them working separately from their main class group, in a smaller group throughout the day in order to accelerate learning, develop social and emotional skills and maintain positive mental health and wellbeing.

As members of a curriculum team (STEM, Wellbeing, Artis and Culture), subject/phase leaders, SLT and governors monitor lesson plans, moderate pupil work and conduct learning walks. This supports the evaluation of their subject, enables them to provide training, support and resources to colleagues and identify priorities for improvement. In addition, reliable data generated from end of unit assessments, standardised tests and teacher assessments, enables teachers to form triangulated judgements that are used to evaluate current attainment, curriculum coverage and content and shape future learning. This information is then used to form the basis of the School Development Plan.

Impact – the extent which our pupils have learnt what we intended them to learn and how we know this.

At Woodlands, the SLT, staff and governors are proud of the children’s achievements, both academically and pastorally. Standards at Woodlands continue on an upward trajectory. Monitoring, learning walks, book scrutiny, triangulated assessments, pupil voice and parent questionnaires evidence:

Outcomes that are consistently in line, or better than national expectations for Phonics, Reading, Writing and Maths, across all key stages.
The majority of pupils make good or better progress during their time at Woodlands.
Children’s attendance is good and pupils enjoy coming to school.
Children speak about their learning articulately and enthusiastically, making links between subjects, discussing how new learning build on prior learning, and demonstrating how learning is meaningful and long lasting.
Children can describe how the curriculum teaches British Values and how everyone is treated equally at Woodlands They can talk about how the curriculum teaches them to be accepting and tolerant individuals and how they are becoming increasing
Children know that school is safe place to be and how consistent behaviour management systems help to support them to manage their own feelings and behaviour; they know what to do on the rare occasions that bullying may occur and how it is successfully dealt with.

We understand that our children learn better when their interests and fascinations are allowed to flourish, where they are encouraged to explore subjects in a variety of ways and are viewed in terms of their strengths, not their weaknesses. Our pupils make more effective use of creative approaches to learning, that are integral to everyday teaching, ensuring they have opportunity to develop knowledge, skills and understanding for both core and foundation subjects, expressing these in a range of different ways and media. Teachers confidently encourage pupils to make connections across traditional boundaries, link conceptual learning, speculate constructively, maintain an open mind whilst exploring a wide range of options, and reflect critically on ideas and outcomes. As a result, pupils’ ability to work collaboratively to solve problems is embedded and ensures the best possible outcomes for all.

Curriculum Statement updated Nov 2023

To read more about our curriculum, click on the links below.

Addendum to Curriculum Statement

Curriculum Teams

At Woodlands, it is our intention that all stakeholders will become part of our established curriculum teams.

Purpose

Contribute to the monitoring and evaluation of the curriculum and wider provision in school
Increase staff voice and ownership of curriculum aspects and wider provision
Improve communication
Involve all stakeholders in shaping and evaluating the whole school development plan

Curriculum Teams 2023-34

Roles

Team Leader

Coordinate the monitoring and evaluating activities
Monitor the quality of the work of the team members
Coordinate the feedback from the team evaluations for the senior leadership team and the governing body, through the headteacher
Provide professional advice and guidance to team members to support and challenge them in their role to monitor the quality of provision
Liaise closely with the allocated governor

Team Member

Monitor and evaluate the quality of provision in a specific area(s)
Provide support and challenge to staff to help them improve provision and/or the quality of teaching and learning
Provide oral and written evaluations of provision, identify strengths and areas for development, support for staff and share information on provision with senior leaders (including governors)

Methodology

Monitor and evaluate curriculum provision and/or the quality of teaching and learning in an aspect of provision or curriculum
Identify and make recommendations for relevant individual and whole school training requirements to implement development priorities
Evaluate the impact of training and/or the procurement of additional resources or facilities to support improved provision/curriculum implementation
Canvas and evaluate ‘pupil voice’ – What difference does the provision make to pupils?
Ensure adequate resourcing of the provision or subject (this could include; materials, external visits, and visits from specialist teachers or experts)
Complete a running overview of strengths and weakness across the academic year (completed termly)
Identify and make recommendations for improvement priorities to the curriculum team and senior leaders (including governors)
Evaluate the effectiveness of school improvement work to achieve improvement priorities
Share overview with governors termly
Provide support and challenge to staff to enable them to improve the quality of provision/teaching and learning (In the first instance provide staff with guidance and research evidence that will help them improve their skills, knowledge and understanding of the provision or focus area. Other support for staff may include modelling, support with planning and delivery)
Lead staff meetings to help improve staff skills, knowledge and understanding (using research based evidence)
Staff meeting time to be allocated once every half term to carry out monitoring and evaluation activities, however some activities will need to be carried out in lesson time (to be agreed in advance with the team leader and programmed into the whole school timeline to ensure overloading is minimised)
Team leader to liaise directly with allocated governors for each team to share info and evaluations