Our Curriculum Intent
At Landewednack, we have designed an ambitious curriculum for our children which is based on the application of the National Curriculum within our unique context. This is underpinned by our vision and values.
Our curriculum driver ‘Social Responsibility’ emphasises the importance of understanding world events and our local context. Therefore, we have designed our curriculum to be adaptable to the ever changing world.
Whilst we celebrate our local context, we recognise the need to enrich our children’s experience with ‘Diversity’ that they may not otherwise experience.
‘Eloquence’ drives all we do; research shows that children who have a wide vocabulary and an ability to communicate well have the best life chances.
Our driver- ‘Independence’ is created from the need to build our children’s resilience, equip them with the opportunities and ‘tools’ to learn and succeed, and links with our driver ‘Aspiration’; as well as ensuring our children are happy, well supported and confident, we want to foster high academic aspirations and attitudes to learning as well as developing the skills they will need for success in higher education and in future careers.
We face a unique challenge in that, due to being a small school with mixed year group classes, our year group structure may change each year (for example, a Reception / Year 1 class becoming a Reception / Year 1 / Year 2 Class). This means that it is not effective for us to plan year-group based repeating programmes, as this would risk children missing out on or repeating content due to unavoidable changes in class structures.
Therefore, in order to ensure that all children receive coverage of the curriculum and have the chance to develop their skills and build upon knowledge, we have organised the National Curriculum into curriculum maps for each subject.
These curriculum maps can be found on each subject page on our website. http://www.landewednack.cornwall.sch.uk/website/learning/241149.
These carefully thought out long-term curriculum maps enable us to deliver a bespoke, relevant and exciting curriculum that teachers carefully design into a shorter term plan each term. This allows us to adapt our planning to the shorter term needs and interests of our children, whilst embedding our school drivers and ensuring coverage of skills, concepts and knowledge in the long term.
Teachers produce a topic web each term for each class, which shows our shorter term plans based on the curriculum maps. http://www.landewednack.cornwall.sch.uk/website/learning/241149
This allows us to communicate our learning journey with parents and the community, and enables teachers to carefully sequence and monitor our coverage of the curriculum.
Our challenging and exciting curriculum is reviewed every year in collaboration with children, parents, staff and the wider school community; this ensures that it always reflects current research and practice, it is reflective of the local and wider context, it is suited to the needs of each cohort of children, therefore is always relevant to the unique context of Landewednack School.
Our SHINE Values are embedded throughout our school- everything we do is guided by these principles:
Strive to be the best you can be
Happiness in learning and in life
Imagine what I/ we can achieve
Never give up
Everyone together- school, family, community
National Curriculum Subjects:
Our curriculum is planned so objectives and concepts are repeated and developed in a variety of meaningful and exciting ways to facilitate deep learning. Linking our subjects to previous learning means that skills and knowledge will be embedded in our children’s long-term memory.
Our School ‘Drivers’:
We believe these curriculum drivers are essential to enable the children at Landewednack School to experience a broad, rich and relevant curriculum and to develop their knowledge, skills and personal characteristics to prepare them for a future where they are the best they can be!
Our Core Curriculum drivers are:
- Aspiration
- Independence
- Diversity
- Eloquence
- Social Responsibility
Reading
Reading is at the heart of our school:
We build reading into all areas of our curriculum, from our ’10 minute subject reads’ to our class novel, to our ‘reading for pleasure’ time.
We believe that instilling a lifelong love of reading is crucial for our children’s academic achievement, mental health and their future economic success.
Possibilities and Opportunities:
Our ‘Landewednack Dozen’
Pupils cannot aspire to things they have never encountered and cannot learn vital life skills without experience. The Landewednack school family have chosen twelve opportunities that the children will experience during their time at our school. We believe that in order for our children to fulfil their potential they must be given a broad range of exciting opportunities to enable them to flourish, equipping them with the knowledge and cultural capital they need for future success:
We pledge that during their time at Landewednack School, our children will complete the ‘Landewednack Dozen’:
- Go surfing, sailing & swim in the sea
- Visit a theatre
- Build a den
- Cook on a bonfire
- Actively support the community
- Perform to an audience
- Be a positive role model
- Support a national or global cause or charity
- Take part in a residential trip
- Visit a city
- Carry out a job or responsibility
- Run an enterprise
Click on the link below to see our forum presentation on our curriculum design:
At Landewednack School we follow a ‘skills-based’ curriculum. This means that a clear progression of skills is taught from Nursery to Year Six, through exciting, relevant topics and experiences. We do this by following the Chris Quigley ‘Essentials’ curriculum; this sets out essential coverage, learning objectives and standards which are required for all subjects.
The Essential Curriculum also provides progress measures for all subjects including personal, social and emotional development.
One of the primary reasons why we have chosen to adopt the Essentials Curriculum at Landewednack is because it emphasises the importance of developing the depth of children’s learning through teaching a progression of skills; this reflects the government’s ‘mastery curriculum’. Learning is cyclical and concepts are revisited enabling children to deepen their understanding and commit knowledge to their long-term memory.
Please see the individual subject information under the "Learning" heading on the front of our website.
Curriculum Implementation
Due to our mixed aged classes and varying numbers in each year groups our class structure is evaluated yearly, therefore our long term curriculum planning is reviewed yearly. We take into account the needs and characteristics of the cohort, the children’s experiences and prior learning as well as current local and global contexts.
When planning, our teachers start with the skills and knowledge to be taught; around those, they plan a whole school or class topic which lasts for roughly a term. Our SHINE values and School Drivers- Aspiration, Independence and Diversity run throughout.
We aim to launch our topic with a ‘hook’ which could take the form of an event, a visit, a visitor etc. Our teachers and TAs are creative and we get very excited when planning new topics for our children to experience. Although the progression of skills and coverage is meticulously planned and monitored, the beauty of our curriculum is that it is not a ‘scheme of work’ or a rolling programme so is always current, relevant and never boring!
We link subjects where we can so they sit well together in our topics (for example, Ancient Egypt (History) and rivers (Geography) but teachers ensure subject knowledge and skills are taught explicitly.
Over the course of each unit of work and within each subject we ensure the same components are present:
- Elicitation
- Revision of prior knowledge
- Planning for teaching and ‘what do we want to find out?’
- Use of meta-cognitive strategies for long-term ‘stickability’ eg knowledge organisers, ‘spider graphs’
- Key Vocabulary
- Topic/ subject reads
- Connect and apply knowledge and skills
- Assessment (‘catch up’ interventions planned where needed)
We also allow for changes based on our assessment for learning as well as the contribution and ideas from our children who are very much involved in the development of our topics.
We share termly topic plans and welcome ideas, contributions, resources, and visitors to make learning at Landewednack meaningful, exciting and memorable!
