Curriculum Statement
At East-the-Water Primary, we understand that for our pupils to leave our school prepared for the future they need an enriched, progressive and connected curriculum that enables them to be independent, resilient and empathetic citizens of the world. Our curriculum is engaging and enables all children to develop the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in school and beyond.
Our curriculum has been designed to enable curiosity about the world around them; to include and then extend their knowledge beyond their immediate locality. We recognise that our school is in an area of relative geographical isolation and does not represent the cultural diversity experienced in other locations in Britain. We therefore see it as our responsibility to help broaden our children’s views and experiences beyond East-the-Water, including the United Kingdom and wider world. Our curriculum broadens our children’s understanding by: learning about events that have happened in the past and how they shape our world today; celebrating significant individuals and how they have impacted our lives; comparing our locality with other parts of the world; and understanding how space and place change over time. At East-the-Water Primary we understand that in order for children to learn effectively we need to help them build schemas of prior learning in order to understand and attach new learning. This is achieved with coherent progression maps for each subject which focus on the following: the National Curriculum, skills, vocabulary and chronological understanding.
We want all of our children:
- To develop a lifelong love of learning and curiosity about the world around them.
- To submerge them in language and provide a range of contexts, allowing for language and comprehension development.
- To build on their own self-awareness and awareness of others.
- To prepare them for opportunities and experiences that extend within and beyond their locality into the wider world.
- To understand their own nationality and culture at the same time as nurturing knowledge and respect for other faiths, cultures and lifestyles.
- To take pride in their own achievements and value their contributions to wider school life.
- To take ownership of their learning and to know more and remember more.
- For learning to be recalled with ease, so that new knowledge can connect and attach allowing for deeper understanding.
Our curriculum is grounded in evidence about how pupils learn and retain knowledge in the long term. Using the ‘Principles of Rosenshine’ we focus on key learning that underpins previous and future learning. Each scheme of work connects, allowing pupils to develop deeper understanding of the key skills and knowledge in each subject. Our lessons are planned to ensure that children; can rehearse previous knowledge; use previous learned skills to explore new content; have opportunities to retrieve new knowledge in each session to allow it to progress from working memory to long-term memory. We have developed our curriculum to put more emphasis on oracy, allowing time for discussion, reasoning and debate within each lesson.
Parents are encouraged to engage with the school and their child’s learning by:
- Teachers celebrating successes through ‘Star of the Week’
- Teachers being available to discuss parental concerns and provide positive feedback at the end of the school day.
- Termly curriculum letters to parents.
- Two parent consultations (Autumn and Spring term)
- School report (Summer term)
- Learning highlights shared in Newsletters and on school website.
Curriculum Map
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