Curriculum Rationale
Curriculum Intent
At Wessex Gardens, we grow together as honest, independent, confident, life-long learners, with high aspirations. There is a strong focus on developing children’s moral, spiritual, social and cultural understanding.
Our curriculum has been carefully designed and mapped out to ensure systematic progression and coverage of the National Curriculum. Breadth and balance of subjects are achieved through a cross-curricular, topic based approach to planning, which provides children with a range of rich and memorable learning experiences. This is supplemented by engaging, thematic curriculum weeks, which allow for deeper learning, understanding and application of skills.
Understanding of vocabulary is at the heart of our curriculum, in recognition of a large proportion of our community that speak English as an additional language.
As a highly inclusive school, we ensure that learning is tailored to children's needs and that practical resources, visual images and video content are used to support children's understanding.
Our Curriculum aims to:
- Support every child to develop their curiosity and a love of learning, through engaging and memorable learning experiences in a wide range of subjects and contexts
- Support every child to develop their love of reading, through the systematic teaching of reading and an exposure to a diverse diet of authors and genres
- Teach an appreciation of the British culture and values, as well as the understanding, tolerance and respect for a wide range of other cultures, beliefs
- Develop pupils’ core skills of speaking, listening, reading, writing and maths, enabling them to use these to communicate effectively and solve problems across a wide range of subjects and situations
- Allow children to develop their imagination and interest through the creative and expressive arts
- Build an appreciation of the natural environment and our impact on it
- Ensure that pupils know how to keep themselves and other safe, including online
- Build an awareness and respect for diversity
- Equip every child with self-regulation strategies and with skills to manage their physical, emotional and mental health
- Support every child to develop their sense of self-worth and their ability to speak up for what is right
Our curriculum is supported by the following 10 Big Ideas, which act as global concepts and themes that thread throughout each topic.