Our Curriculum

Creative, Inclusive, Courageous.

Our curriculum is specifically designed with our children, community and unique context firmly in mind. Structured around a four-year rolling programme, our curriculum is planned to maximise the potential of our mixed-age classes. Learning is knowledge-rich due to its cyclical design and teacher’s skill at encouraging retrieval term-on-term and year-on-year. Our curriculum is underpinned by stimulating topics, however meaningful links have only been made when it strengthens or deepens the learning experience and doesn't blur the boundaries between academic disciplines and skill progression.

Three core strands are woven through our curriculum:

A Therapeutic Strand which includes deliberate practice to enhance pupils mental health, well- being and sense of self, through pursuits such as free-drawing, music-making, emotional literacy, relational practice and empathy.

A Spirituality Strand which includes both spontaneous and deliberately planned for learning experiences, that develop children's spiritual awareness, philosophical and theological thinking, awe, wonder and curiosity about themselves, others, the world and beyond.

An Ecology Strand which inspires and encourages children to explore the interconnectedness of living things, both in their local environment and in the wider world, and develop their own role as stewards of our earth.

Self to World

Where appropriate, our learning is sequenced to begin with issues close to home and personal experience, before broadening out to national and worldwide concerns. This approach helps children ground their learning in familiar people, places and things and develop a firm base from which to then build new knowledge and skills, and open their minds to encounter unfamiliar concepts and ideas. This is particularly pertinent in our KS1 curriculum, where in Autumn Term geography for example children might learn about mapping their school and local village, in Spring Term they may learn about a local or national issue such as farming, and then in the Summer Term they may explore a more global context such as animals across the world or rainforests.

We are currently developing our 4-year rolling curriculum. The new long term plans for KS1 and KS2 Year A are here:

/docs/Year_A_Curriculum_Overview_KS1.docx

/docs/Year_A_Curriculum_Overview_KS2.docx

In the meantime if you would like any further information about our curriculum, teaching or learning, please get in touch with our curriculum lead Kirsti-Anna Hume.