‘GROWING SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE FOR LIFE’

At Wetheringsett VC Primary School, the word ‘curriculum’ refers to everything a child experiences within the school and in related activities at home and beyond.  This means that we teach the National Curriculum, with a focus on literacy and mathematics as a foundation for all our learning, but it means much more than that.

The distinctively Christian nature of the school is reflected all day, every day in the learning environment we have created both inside and out. We make space for spiritual reflection; we have close links with the Church and Diocese and actively seek to promote the Christian ethos throughout the day. We seek opportunities to generate a sense of awe and wonder at the world around us. The spiritual, moral, social and cultural aspects of the curriculum are integral to everything we do. This includes ensuring that we promote the fundamental British values as described in our separate statement.

We actively seek opportunities to use ‘real life’ as the basis for our teaching: using the local environment and outdoors as well as the local community. It is important to us that our children begin to understand their own religious and cultural heritage but also to develop their understanding and appreciation of the similarities and differences within world religions and cultures.

We do our utmost to ensure that, by the time they leave us, every child has the skills and knowledge necessary to be successful at secondary school and beyond. We actively teach children how to learn, including thinking skills and philosophy, as we believe this is essential in enabling them to cope with such a rapidly changing world. They will be adaptable, collaborative, capable of critical thinking and problem solving and well-practiced in the use of technology as a tool for learning.

We put the learning needs of individuals at the centre of our lesson planning. We take note of what interests and motivates the children and adapt the curriculum to accommodate this. We want our children to learn, as far as possible, through a theme based approach that encourages the understanding of cross-curricular links. Teachers will encourage depth of understanding by lingering longer, digging deeper and by encouraging children to do the same. They will seek creative and inspirational ways of engaging children in their own learning.

We want our children to learn to persevere especially when work/relationships get tough. It is also important that they understand that it is sometimes necessary, even advantageous, to make mistakes, but that they should be proud of their own efforts and respectful of those of their classmates. As we assess the children’s learning we use feedback to encourage, support and challenge in order that all make the best possible progress.

All adults within the school contribute to the curriculum that the children experience: they set examples by their own behaviour, by their love of learning, by their care for the children, by the aspirations they have for them, the opportunities that they create for them, and by the pride with which they celebrate their achievements.