Rationale

Our Whole School Curriculum design allows and promotes:

Retention of powerful knowledge and vocabulary

Our curriculum allows children to retain powerful knowledge and vocabulary. It is not merely a set of facts for children to learn and then forget. It is carefully designed and planned in such a way that knowledge will be stored in children’s long-term memories, so that they can build on it and use it later in life.

Application of powerful knowledge and vocabulary

We have designed a curriculum that allows children to become confident and fluent with powerful knowledge and vocabulary. Children are taught in such a way that they acquire knowledge that they can take with them for the rest of their lives, knowledge that they can use when forming arguments and judgements, or when reading and solving problems. Challenging opportunities to apply knowledge are embedded throughout our curriculum. Progressively planned learning enables children to constantly apply prior knowledge and build upon it.

Inspiration

We ensure that all children gain a wealth of experiences beyond learning facts in the classroom. We want our curriculum to inspire children to want to learn more, to provoke children’s intellectual curiosity and to create experiences of awe and wonder.

Success for Everyone

We believe in the power of knowledge to unlock doors in children’s lives. We believe that knowledge leads to understanding, and that understanding leads to wisdom. Acquiring powerful knowledge enables all children to become grounded people with strong character traits, providing a stepping-stone to a successful future.

Vocabulary is at the heart of our curriculum. We are consciously aware of gaps in pupils’ vocabulary and strive, through our curriculum, to allow all children to become confident and fluent with an extensive range of powerful vocabulary. Academic talk is a key part of our curriculum, where children are given opportunities to apply their knowledge and vocabulary through a range of talk tasks.