OUR Curriculum STATEMENT
Intent
The aim of Vine Tree’s Curriculum is to provide opportunities for children to develop as independent, confident, successful learners with high aspirations who know how to make a positive contribution to their community and the wider society. There is equality of access for all pupils. Developing children’s moral, spiritual, social and cultural understanding is a strong strand across the curriculum.
We plan our curriculum to ensure it has progression, sufficient breadth, balance and relevance for each child. We use the Learning Challenge Curriculum as this approach secures greater learning involvement, builds on children’s prior knowledge and helps them to develop into creative, confident learners who are keen to take risks, collaborate and persevere. It is these qualities which we feel are vital for success in life as well as learning.
Our curriculum whilst paying due regard to achieving high standards in Maths and English is also carefully designed to ensure coverage and progression. It provides children with memorable experiences and many diverse opportunities from which the children can learn and develop a range of transferable skills. Our school is proud to be in the heart of the county of Cheshire East and acknowledges its location in many ways. Our curriculum is enriched by using this as a starting point for engaging interest and accessing the rich cultural resources that Cheshire East has to offer. We also embrace the rich and diverse cultural background from which our children come from. Learning is based on the principles of mutual respect, responsibility and enquiry based learning, which promotes curiosity, embed the application of basic skills across the curriculum and allow writing to be meaningfully embedded.
A primary focus of our Curriculum is to raise aspirations, generate a sense of personal pride in achievement and provide a purpose and relevance for learning. We value parental involvement and share curriculum plans on a half termly basis, outlining what knowledge, skills and vocabulary will be covered in each Learning Challenge. As well as inviting parents into school on a regular basis to share and celebrate their children’s many achievements.
Over the course of the year an element of Enterprise is planned to enhance the year groups Learning Challenge. By blending enterprise with education our curriculum enhances the skills that employers seek and allows our children to create their own definition of success. The curriculum enterprise money goes back into the year group’s pot to fund enhancement for their Learning Challenge.
Implementation
Each topic starts with a Prime Learning Challenge which is expressed as a question. We teach our curriculum through the driver subjects of Science, History and Geography. Each year group has a breakdown of knowledge, skills and understanding to be taught for each subject and this ensures that progression is built upon from the previous year’s learning. We start all new learning challenges with a pre-learning task to assess children’s prior knowledge before planning any subsidiary learning tasks. This also ensures that any gaps in learning can be addressed. All of the subsidiary learning tasks are also expressed as questions. We then build and extend learning making explicit links between different subject areas. The teaching of new vocabulary and oracy skills are at the heart of our curriculum and we deliberately build in opportunities for talk repetition and practice to ensure that depth of knowledge is secure.
Impact
The outcomes of the curriculum are measured by the attainment and progress made by the children. Put simply how much the children know and remember including whether or not the children have mastered a particular skill. Teachers continually use assessment of the children’s responses and the work they produce to measure impact. Subject leaders play an important part in the success of the curriculum by leading a regular programme of monitoring, evaluation and review. This includes book scrutinies, learning walks and lesson observations to measure the impact of teaching and learning. As well as pupil interviews to gauge children’s engagement and enjoyment of the curriculum. Teachers and leaders also have the school’s curriculum assessment data to support judgements on the impact our curriculum is having.
The leadership team in consultation with staff and children regularly review and renew the school curriculum to ensure all elements are fit for purpose.