Our curriculum at West Row Academy

Intent

At West Row Academy, we have designed our curriculum with the intent that all of our pupils encounter, engage with and study the content which is considered integral to a well-rounded and holistic education.

We have designed our curriculum with the whole child in mind. We aim to motivate our pupils to:

• Be curious about the world around them and have thirst for learning
• Be imaginative and creative and value the arts
• Be respectful of their school, community and wider world
• Be passionate about learning and develop resilience when things go wrong
• Be brave enough to try new things
• Be kind and helpful and appreciate other people
• Be safe and healthy: physically, mentally and emotionally and build positive relationships with others and themselves
• Be emotionally literate, empathise with others and be sure of their integral value as a person
• Know right from wrong and develop personal integrity
• Ignite a love of reading, writing and maths
• Understand and feel that they belong and are part of their local community.

We have chosen to use the Primary Knowledge Curriculum because it is a well-sequenced, knowledge-rich curriculum which is based on the following principles:

• Knowledge is valued and specified
• Knowledge is well-sequenced
• Knowledge is taught to be remembered

The content in our curriculum has been carefully chosen by subject experts and has been sequenced in a meaningful way that enables children to make connections and progress from unit to unit, term to term and year to year.

We recognise and value each subject and teach them discretely, ensuring that our children develop a deep understanding and love of each distinct discipline.

Where appropriate, links are made across disciplines to enable children to make meaningful connections (e.g. our children learn about Northern Europe in geography before learning about the Vikings in history).

We have made adaptations to this curriculum in order to include local history, geography and other locally relevant subject content for our pupils.

Knowledge, skills and vocabulary to be taught are specified through:

• Our whole school curriculum overview outlines the units covered in each subject across the year
• Subject curriculum maps: detail exactly what we cover in each subject, with additional detail showing what is covered in each lesson
• Subject rationales: explain the reasoning behind how our curriculum was developed for each subject
• Unit rationales: outline the substantive knowledge, concepts and disciplinary knowledge taught in each unit, and how each unit fits in with the bigger curriculum picture
• The knowledge goals and assessment goals set out in our planning documents for each subject; these explain what we plan for all children to know by the end of each lesson, and the assessment shows what we expect children to commit to long term memory by the end of the unit.

If you would like to know more about out curriculum, please click on one of the links below. If you still require further support please contact our school office and ask to make an appointment with our curriculum leader, Miss Guggiari.