The Curriculum @ Chacewater
Intent
When planning our curriculum, Chacewater School has considered the needs of our pupils and families. We want learning to be meaningful and memorable under our ethos of ‘Caring and Learning together’. With this in mind, we have worked to prioritise the ideas we want our children to experience during their time with us. We have developed our own LEAP curriculum and these fundamental ideas are at the forefront of our mind and key drivers we use when thinking about learning opportunities:
Locality - our local area and community is very important to us and we will make the most of local links available. Through exploration, investigation and enquiry we will make use of our local area of Chacewater and Cornwall and the people within it, so that children develop a sense of place, understand their heritage and can celebrate what makes our local area unique and special.
Engaging - we want all of the learning experiences we offer children to be memorable. Through thematic links when possible we will make sure learning is contextualised, is relevant and encourages a real ‘thirst for learning’. We will have a broad offer of trips, residential visits and visitors which enhance our wider curriculum.
Aspiring and ambitious - we will ensure that our children understand that there is no limit to what they can achieve. We will embrace ‘blue sky thinking’ and our outcomes will reflect this. As much as we will celebrate our locality, we will also look beyond this, ensuring that we celebrate the diversity in the world that exists around us.
Powerful and purposeful - by making use of research, we will tailor our teaching to take account of ideas linked to the latest ideas around cognitive science and learning behaviours. We allow our children time to work collaboratively, share and discuss to empower them to become independent thinkers.
Implementation: How do we deliver our curriculum?
Our curriculum allows us to deliver the appropriate subject content through creative themes. We understand that not all subjects can be incorporated into a theme and therefore plan and ensure that subjects are taught to guarantee a broadness across the curriculum. Subjects have been developed so that children build upon skills progressively, integrating with other subjects to secure strong, meaningful and purposeful learning. It is essential that knowledge is embedded and reflected throughout year groups.
To ensure that learning in every subject is sequenced appropriately, progression documents and guides for each subject have been created. This ensures that learning is staged and builds on prior knowledge. This provides the children with the opportunity to revisit vital skills and knowledge regularly and embed this learning; therefore, becoming experts. In addition to this, children's learning incorporates the school’s Learning to Learn skills: The 4 R's; resilience, resourcefulness, reciprocity, and reflection.
We aim to ensure that each theme is memorable and includes a ‘Wow’ moment (or several) this could include a visit, a visitor or anything that sparks curiosity in our children and a desire to learn more. We use assessment to gauge existing understanding of the subject and adjust learning accordingly. Lessons are carefully sequenced and knowledge organsiers are used to support the children in building a schema of key facts.
We use Rosenshine’s approach to lesson design within each subject area. The first lesson in a new sequence of learning will always refer back to the previous year group and term’s work. Further lessons will always review previous learning. Our emphasis is on frequent review of content learned to ensure that pupils have a deep and secure knowledge.
Impact:
The curriculum at Chacewater is the vehicle through which children learn. This is not just about academic learning. It is much wider than this. We believe our curriculum has a real impact and will therefore extend children’s horizons and aspirations as learners. Children are given opportunities to visit and experience their learning outside of the classroom, through educational termly visits, visits from experts and through performances.
We strive to ensure that our children’s attainment in core and foundation subjects are in line or exceeding their age-related expectations, when we consider the various starting points of children. We always consider age related expectations and have high expectations for all children to succeed.
At Chacewater, we reflect on the standards achieved against planned outcomes. Teachers professional judgement is supported by utilising a range of assessment strategies such as small assessments, quizzes, evaluation of end of ‘unit’ work and concept mapping.
We celebrate the learning at the end of themes, where children demonstrate their knowledge they have gained, through work exhibitions for parents/carers.
