We provide a curriculum which is ambitious and designed to provide our pupils with the best opportunities for their future.
We have taken in to consideration the context of our school. Although we are two separate schools, the majority of our pupils move from EYFS in Crabtree Infant School through to Year 6 in Crabtree Junior School. We have looked at their prior learning (liaising with local nurseries before they begin their journey) and historical data showing where Crabtree pupils go when they leave our school, what they study in secondary education and beyond. This has enabled us to focus specifically on the children in our school, consider their individual needs throughout KS2 and prepare them for their future. We are aware that as our cohort changes, we need to continually review our provision.
The content of our curriculum is based on the National Curriculum. However, through careful planning, we adapt the curriculum and personalise it, adding breadth and depth, making it exciting and inspiring for our children. We think very carefully before using any bought schemes and these are adapted to fit our curriculum. We carefully select from a variety of sources, so that the curriculum is full, broad and balanced, whilst ensuring that teacher workload is not excessive. The sources of our curriculum can be found here.
As a staff we feel strongly that our curriculum should be both knowledge and skills based and aim to ensure that the children understand not only the learning journey of knowledge, but also how their skills develop over time too. It is important to have a clear ‘end point’ in mind when creating a curriculum plan and the journey of steps that are needed to reach that goal.
Our curriculum is underpinned by our school values. These were recently updated to take into account our current cohort and the future for which we are preparing them. These values are; Kindness, Gratitude, Integrity, Compassion and Courage.
When considering what to include in our curriculum, we take into account our specific cohort of children and their barriers to learning. Through discussing these barriers to learning as a staff team, we develop ‘curriculum drivers’. Our drivers are; Wellbeing, Social Justice and Environmental Impact.
Mental Health and wellbeing is a very important part of our curriculum. As well as embedding it into all areas of our curriculum we currently teach the children explicitly through weekly assemblies. We also take great care to ensure that British values, SMSC and PSHE are evident in our teaching and learning.
As we live in an ever changing world, we try to adapt our curriculum to include areas which we feel are important for our children’s future. For example, a greater knowledge and understanding about the environment.
As a school, we take great pride in our Sport and Music provision. Although we strive for academic excellence in maths and English, we do not believe in reducing the time spent on other areas of the curriculum. Our curriculum is not narrowed. The opportunity to be active and creative is of huge importance and we hope to offer every child the opportunity to find their own passion -be it academia, sport, music, art or drama.
Through our inclusive broad and balanced curriculum and the extra-curricular offer, we are able to provide a huge variety of opportunities and experiences for all of the children at our school.
We feel that our curriculum is:
Inclusive
Inspiring
Ambitious
Broad & balanced
Evolving
Challenging – offering depth for all (not only the more able)
Inclusive
We do not know what the future holds for our children, so it is important to give them the knowledge and skills to be confident active citizens with inquisitive minds and a desire to help others.
