Our Curriculum
The West Exmoor Federation prides itself on the highly engaging curriculum that is offered to all of our children. The curriculum is supported and enriched by a wide variety of activities, including a breakfast club, many after school clubs and a holiday club. Where ever possible we enhance learning through enrichment experiences and educational visits. We also encourage our children to participate in an extensive range of special events and residential visits.
Our CARIS values are seemlessly interwoven through our curriculum as we strive to educate the whole child. We believe that the spiritual growth of our children is as important as, and indeed is a vital contributor to, their academic development. We provide our children with opportunities to consider the world around them and to combine thoughts and emotions to reflect, respond to, and seek to give meaning and purpose to the experiences they encounter in life.
As a federation of local authority maintained primary school, we adhere to the national curriculum (2014). The intent of this curriculum is made explicit through the aims for each subject area, and we apply these to our federation context. Wherever possible, we link these subject areas together to create an an engaging and cohesive thematic approach to learning.
CURRICULUM STATEMENT
INTENT:
- To provide the children of our federation with an aspirational, broad, balanced and rich curriculum that inspires and nurtures a lifelong love of learning and stokes the fire of ambition.
- To ensure that our CARIS values passionately underpin all aspects of our curriculum.
- To ensure that our curriculum provides our children with a wealth of experiences and opportunities, both within and beyond the classroom, to challenge, enlighten and develop knowledge, skills and creativity for their future life choices.
- To give our children to have a voice, valuing their opinions, thoughts and feelings.
- To enable our children to be analytical, asking the unaskable and thinking BIG.
- To provide a solid foundation in basic skills as quickly as possible in order that they become readily transferable.
- To remove significant barriers to learning to enable all of our children to reach their potential.
- To ensure a cross curricular, holistic approach to learning enthuses our children to develop their basic skills whilst learning key knowledge and skills about any theme or topic.
IMPLEMENTATION:
- Our curriculum map, subject statements, skills progression grids (I Can Statements), knowledge organisers and medium/short-term plans ensure cumulative progression, confidence and competence within each aspect of learning and across each phase.
- High quality, varied teaching enables our ambitious curriculum to be successfully implemented.
- Effective strategies for teaching reading, writing, mathematics and science are consistent and cohesive across the federation.
- Delivery of the curriculum is reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that next steps are swiftly identified and implemented quickly and that prior knowledge is revisited to aid retention.
- Children have regular access to specialist provision, e.g. music, art and sport, which shows the importance placed on the wider curriculum.
- Children have regular opportunities to take part in learning beyond the classroom, which shows the importance placed on the wider curriculum in our curriculum offer, eg forest schools, enrichment days, visits, residential trips, etc.
IMPACT:
- Our children love coming to school and enjoy learning.
- In and beyond lessons our children are curious and inspired and engaged by their learning.
- Our children are confident, independent and resilient learners who enquire and problem solve and know that finding things challenging is a vital part of learning.
- Our children experience success within their learning, are proud of their achievements and thrive as a result.
- Behaviour is exemplary; our children are kind, happy and caring.
- Our children are respectful citizens, cornerstones of their communities and courageous advocates for all that they believe in.
- Our data shows positive progress in all three core subjects at the end of KS2.
- Through our broad, balanced and rich curriculum, Fundamental British Values and SMSC are embedded.
- Our children embody knowledge, understanding and respect of the rich, cultural heritage of modern Britain.