About our Curriculum

Our Primary Curriculum aims to give children the strongest possible start to their education, to ensure they acquire the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in their next stages of learning and beyond. Pupils study a broad and balanced curriculum, in order to:

make good progress in all aspects of their development;
make a strong start in early reading, writing and mathematics, enabling them to access a rich and varied curriculum;
develop the essential knowledge and skills needed for their next stages of learning of beyond;
begin to appreciate and acquire powerful knowledge of each subject, as defined by subject community and specialists;
increase their knowledge and understanding of the world around them, and begin to understand their rights and responsibilities as global citizens;
have high aspirations for their future.

Curriculum Intent

High Aspirations

All children should have high aspirations and bright futures. Our curriculum ensures that our children are well-prepared with the knowledge and skills required to realise their goals and future aspirations. Our curriculum is informed by academic research about how children learn best, enabling all pupils to achieve excellent outcomes and reach their full potential. We believe that children have the right to expect and experience a challenging, relevant, and broad curriculum that prepares them for life-long learning.

Our Values

Our curriculum is underpinned by our core values. We are on the journey to become a Rights Respecting School, ensuring our pupils understand their rights and the rights of others. We support all children to develop their character and act with honesty and integrity. Children develop their competence in six Graduate Skills, which prepare them for life-long learning.

Community

Our curriculum equips children with the knowledge, skills, confidence, and oracy skills to become educated citizens who can actively engage in the world around them and are empowered to transform their community and society. We aim for children to leave SPW Primary as articulate, confident and compassionate individuals. Our curriculum represents our diverse community and our local context. We celebrate diversity of all forms. Equality and inclusion is at the heart of our curriculum.

Please read our full Curriculum Intent document:

Curriculum Intent 2023-24

Curriculum Implementation

Specific threads run throughout our curriculum and have informed its design. Our Curriculum Threads (Learning Theories and Memory, Cultural Capital, Oracy , Rights and Values, Personal Development and Subject Expertise) ensure our curriculum is meaningful, challenging and effective in meeting its aims and intent.

Our curriculum takes account of both the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum and the National Curriculum. It has been carefully designed by outstanding primary practitioners in consultation with some subject specialists from the secondary phase to provide an enhanced and challenging curriculum. In some subject areas, our curriculum goes beyond the National Curriculum Programme of Study, offering broad and varied learning opportunities.

Curriculum Threads

Our Primary Curriculum is underpinned by six curriculum threads, that we believe are critical to providing a meaningful and challenging curriculum that meets the needs of our pupils:

Achievement
Belonging
Creativity
Diversity
Enrichment
Future

How does children’s knowledge develop over time?

Our teachers understand that children develop schemata and conceptual understanding through deep learning, that they are able to remember, retrieve and apply to new contexts, and through making connections and links between ideas and concepts. Our teachers and Curriculum Leaders have had CPD to develop their own knowledge and understanding of memory and learning; dual coding and effective knowledge retrieval.

Each topic and skill has been carefully and deliberately sequenced into our overall Curriculum Map to ensure children can build new learning successfully, taking into account their prior knowledge. Our Phase Leaders and teachers also ensure encourage children to make links between and across subjects. You can view our Year-Group Curriculum Maps below.

Our Curriculum Leaders ensure there is a clear progression in knowledge and skills within each subject and have created Subject Progression Documents that ensure current learning is underpinned by and builds upon prior learning, including the knowledge and skills acquire in the Early Years Foundation Stage. Our Progression Documents ensure children are taught the appropriate skills and knowledge in each year group, ready to make good progress as they move through the school and into Key Stage 3. Our SPWF Schemes of Work ensure that there are regular and effective opportunities to review and retrieve knowledge learned previously, as well as ensuring work set is of an appropriate level of challenge for children. Curriculum Leaders have also considered key vocabulary and language structures to be taught in each unit, ensuring all children are supported to acquire new Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary effectively.

For more information take a look at our Progression Documents.

Phonics and Reading

At St Paul’s Way Foundation School, we teach phonics using the ‘Read Write Inc. Phonics’ Programme. This is a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonics skills, that aims to ensure pupils are fluent readers by the age of seven. The programme is published by Open University Press.

You can find out more about how we teach Phonics and Reading, and the high-quality texts we use in our curriculum, on our Phonics and Reading page.

Please read our full Curriculum Design and Sequencing documents:

Curriculum Design and Sequencing

Our Curriculum Maps

Our Curriculum Maps detail the key knowledge and skills that children will learn in each year of our school. Our Curriculum has been designed to ensure new learning builds effectively on children's prior learning and experiences, including those acquired in the Early Years Foundation Stage. For more information about children's progression within subjects, please view our Progression Document page.