An Authentic Curriculum

The curriculum is all of the planned activities that we organise to promote learning, personal growth and development. We teach the National Curriculum, but we personalise the curriculum to include activities that will enrich the school experience for all children. Please see the schemes of work on the curriculum tab. 

Our curriculum is organised to achieve our school vision and includes these curriculum aims:

We will use authentic learning experiences

• The curriculum offers the child the right to experience, develop and practice creativity as an entitlement. Creativity extends beyond the artistic sense and allows for development of fluency of knowledge and ideas through experimentation, connection and play.
• The curriculum will utilise use big questions, real life projects, stories and drama to take learning from the hypothetical into the real and relevant. 
• The curriculum endeavors to involve the community, to utilising the skills and knowledge in the local community and parent body. 
• The curriculum enables children to make a difference in their local and wider community.   

Encourage a love of learning

• The curriculum enables children to develop empathy with other points of view and perspectives. They will use that empathy to move into action to improve the lives of others.
• Teachers will personalise the key knowledge that children need to know, to deliver the learning in ways that engage, motivate and inspire children in issues they are passionate about.
• Teachers will be given time together to plan quality learning experiences, to inspire ideas and to evaluate the impact on children’s learning.
• The curriculum also acts compassionately towards all children, it is inclusive and celebrates diversity.

Give enriching memorable moments

• The curriculum is clear about what the children will know (propositional knowledge) and will be able to do (procedural?knowledge). It is ambitious & covers the National Curriculum.
• The curriculum is planned so that it builds a progressive understanding of ideas, key concepts, chronology and themes.
• The curriculum will allow for natural links between subjects, connecting learning within and across domains of knowledge. It then can strengthen & deepen children’sl earning experiences.

Children with special educational needs are fully included in our authentic curriculum. We ensure that our teaching methods and inclusive and meet the needs of all children. 

We also run a number of curriculum events to support the delivery of the curriculum and enrich the school experience for our children:

Great Science Share: For a whole day, children were able to take part in science investigations that other year groups had set up. This allowed children to run the investigations and lots of collaboration, questions and discussions during the day. At the end of the day, families were invited to come and also take part in some of the science investigations.

Mother Tongue Languages Day: In KS2, children spent a day learning and about and celebrating different languages and cultures. They took part in various activities through the day from learning new words and phrases, songs and designing and running a French café.

Fairground Attractions DT Day: The children took part in a whole school design technology day to create a variety of fairground rides. The children planned, designed, made and evaluated their games and demonstrated them to each other and their families who came to visit. They were able to practise and develop all of their DT skills further.

Hello Yellow: Children took part in a Hello Yellow day during Children’s Mental Health Week, learning about the importance of talking about mental health and support. The theme for this year was ‘Wear it loud, wear it proud’. During the week, every child designed a t-shirt encouraging people to talk about mental health. The winning designs for KS1 and KS2 were made into professional t-shirts so they could wear their designs with pride.

In addition to the whole school events, each year group plans authentic experiences as part of their curriculum such as creating a museum, building their own rivers to analyse flooding, Roman and Viking experience days, planning and delivering an enterprise project and investigating the Great Fire of London. These events not only offer the children the opportunity to deepen their knowledge, but also to develop their real world skills that are embedded throughout our curriculum, including working as a team, finding solutions, presenting, questioning and challenging assumptions, managing time and leadership skills in addition to developing empathy and awareness. 

Please see our long term plans and schemes of work for more detailed information about how our curriculum is planned.

Medium term plans are also available on each year group’s page.

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