Our Curriculum

Our aim is to provide all our children with an ambitious, exciting, relevant and coherently planned knowledge led curriculum, whilst providing wider-opportunities to learn outside of the classroom.  We believe in educating children for life, developing key skills and knowledge that will equip them to be successful adults, ready for the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities that life will bring.

It is designed to meet the individual needs of all our children, expanding their knowledge, social capital, cultural capital and key skills. Whilst ensuring it covers the statutory requirements set by the Department for Education, we also encompass cognitive science and the wider world of pedagogic theory into our classroom practice alongside embracing and promoting the opportunities within our locality. Our unique curriculum ensures coherence and smooth transition across our Trust providing a curriculum from the age of 2-16.

We want all our pupils to develop ‘powerful knowledge’ through the subject curricula. Each subject domain has a carefully planned out and structured method of ensuring pupils develop the knowledge they need to understand the world – but also develop skills which enables pupils to use this knowledge to make a positive difference and succeed in every subject.

Working closely with the other primary schools within our Trust, we offer rich and varied activities built around Sweller’s Theory of Cognitive Load to ensure we broaden children’s horizons, prepare them with key life skills and encourage them to be responsible for their own learning and development.

We recognise the importance of developing employability skills and work very closely with local businesses including our Trust sponsors BAE Systems, Wax Lyrical UK, GSK and many more to ensure our children have the best preparation for their working life when they leave education.

 Our curriculum has been carefully designed to be cyclical, so that knowledge is revisited regularly, and each time is covered with greater complexity so that children are constantly building on their previous foundations.  

We believe that the development of children’s subject-specific vocabulary is key to their understanding and consequently, this is carefully planned into every unit of work.  Different curriculum areas are purposefully linked to encourage and develop a greater sense of understanding and meaning for the children. 

Our intention is for children to love learning, but also to remember the key knowledge they have learnt and transfer it to their long-term memories.  With this in mind, we plan engaging and relevant lessons, that incorporate a range of outdoor learning, practical activities, technology, trips and visitors wherever possible.

If you would like to know more about our curriculum, please contact us and we will be happy to help. 

Early Years

“Every child deserves the best possible start in life and support that enables them to fulfil their potential”

From Pre-School to the end of the Reception year we follow the Early Years guidance, which consists of 7 areas of learning:

Personal, Social and Emotional Development Physical Development Communication and Language Literacy Mathematics Understanding the World Expressive Arts and Design

This curriculum focuses on play-based learning with children expected to have equal opportunity to develop all areas of learning both inside and outside. For this reason we have two extensive high quality Early Years outdoor learning environments and wet weather gear so children can explore outside in all weathers.

Key Stage One and Two

When children move into Year 1 they are taught within the framework of the National Curriculum. Priority is given to the core subjects:

• English
• Mathematics
• Science

We have also added personal development to our core subjects and this is linked with the special skills. 

Children also study: 

•  
• Geography
• History
• Art and Design
• PE
• Music
• Design and Technology 
• RE
• Computing

PE is delivered by our specialist PE teacher who is  professional footballer of 18 years and has Level 5 specialism in Primary PE teaching.

All children learn to swim in each year group from Reception and we have two Swim England qualified swimming teachers within our staff team.

In addition at KS2

Music: all children are taught to play the guitar by specialists from South Lakes Rock School
Modern Foreign Languages: All children receive weekly MFL teaching in French from the Trust French teacher

Our mornings focus on literacy and mathematics with our support staff working in classes so all classes will have at least 2 adults working within them in the morning.