The Warbstow Curriculum
We pride ourselves on our curriculum. Every part is carefully sequenced in our children’s learning story. Rather than present facts and concepts in standalone lessons, they are underpinned with a narrative, encompassing all elements of the curriculum. We do this through careful and thoughtful selection of high-quality texts, taking time to select books to inspire and excite. Each theme is a chapter building on each child’s book of knowledge as they deepen their understanding. This doesn’t just stop with the children, the staff also use a variety of pedagogical texts to reflect their continuous learning journey, hand in hand with the children’s.
Our curriculum cycle above demonstrates how our curriculum is planned and delivered.
To make learning as interesting, meaningful and engaging as possible, we have a Curious Curriculum. This is a knowledge based curriculum with each theme and subsequent lesson starting with an enquiry question. Children are active participants in their learning journey; we promote skills in creativity and develop critical thinking by following a line of enquiry. Our curriculum embraces opportunities to support pupils to become thoughtful and outward looking. We use the UN Sustainable Development Goals to support our curriculum themes, the goals encourage children to make the world a better place, they broaden horizons and enable children to be aspirational for their futures.
Our definition of progress is the widening and deepening of essential knowledge, skills, understanding and learning behaviours. We carefully design, organise and sequence our mixed age curriculum to ensure that children are not merely covering content but achieving a depth to their learning. We build in opportunities to revisit previous learning, which allows children to build upon their prior knowledge and develop a deeper understanding of the skills within the different subjects, in the best possible way for each individual child.
We place great emphasis on our children being equipped with the skills to learn, we do this through a Growth Mindset approach, in school we refer to it as “growing our brains”. Each day we grow our brains and learn from our mistakes, our experiences, from each other and rise to challenges. We are inspired by the successes of others and believers in the power of determination, resilience and “can do”.
We embrace the cultural capital of our families and our geographical location. Through careful analysis and discussion about our pupils’ backgrounds, life experiences and culture, we have designed a curriculum that our children see themselves reflected in. We want every child to feel valued and experience success. Through the curriculum we can impact how children feel about themselves, so that they become resilient, courageous and confident learners, ready to succeed in the challenges of the next stage of their education and lives.
Over the past 12 months, Warbstow Primary Academy has been developing an intelligently sequenced, knowledge-rich curriculum, informed by the most up to date evidence informed research available. The curriculum materials have so far been written for History, Geography and Science by senior leaders. The curriculum has been and will continue to be constantly refined based on feedback from Subject Leaders and Class Teachers. All materials are presented in a highly consistent approach, prioritising quality first teaching at every given opportunity. This should therefore mean the curriculum itself will act as continuing CPD for our teaching staff as the model and structure of curriculum lessons will allow for them to constantly develop and understand effective educational approaches as they teach.
“An open mind and an open heart begins with curiosity.”
