Our Curriculum
The aim of this section is to provide you with a brief summary and flavour of our curriculum.
There are links below which will take you to additional documentation which explains our approach in greater depth.
Underlying Principles
At Western, we teach the national curriculum to all of our pupils, including those with special educational needs or disabilities and those in receipt of Pupil Premium funding.
Our curriculum model consists of six layers which have our school values of Kindness, Honesty and Respect at the base, and our curriculum drivers of Health & Wellbeing, Diversity, Technology and the Natural World as overarching themes. A graphic of our curriculum model can be found here.
Our curriculum offer is extensive and also provides children with opportunities to learn beyond the remit of the National Curriculum so they can build cultural capital, develop as individuals and have a clear set of values to guide them through life.
Structure and delivery
At Western we ensure that individual subjects are taught discretely, maintaining subject-specific content and discipline. However, we give context to subject specific knowledge and skills by delivering learning though an engaging, topic-based approach. Topics are introduced through an event such as an educational visit, designed to immediately engage the pupils, and end with a celebration event designed to showcase children’s learning and provide ongoing motivation. Our Principles of Teaching and Learning agreement, which can be found here, provides staff with a consistent, research-based approach to lesson structure and defines our pedagogical expectations.
Key Knowledge Maps are used to identify the critical elements of learning which will provide the foundation for future learning in a subject discipline. An example can be found here. The school’s long term planning maps can be found here
We also encourage children to develop key learning habits; our Characteristics of an Effective Learner can be found here
Our curriculum offer is extensive and also provides children with opportunities to learn beyond the remit of the National Curriculum so they can build cultural capital, develop as individuals and have a clear set of values to guide them through life.
Pupil Voice
At Western, we believe it is very important that children are given the opportunity to have strategic involvement in the content and evolution of their curriculum. This is achieved through our use of Success Groups which are made up of staff and pupils, with the remit of monitoring and developing every aspect of our curriculum.
Embedding learning (Assessment)
Prior learning is revisited at the start of every lesson by questioning children about learning in a layered approach which includes recent learning (same week or term) and ‘older’ learning (previous term or academic year). This enables teachers to immediately identify and address gaps in learning and/or misunderstandings.
In addition, low-stakes quizzing is used during and at the end of a unit of learning to assess knowledge and understanding. This is done through the use of an app called Socrative which enables pupils to complete the quiz (assessment) on their iPad and provides the teacher with an immediate gap analysis report. Quizzes are designed by subject leads and are based on the content of the Key Knowledge Maps.
iPad
All pupils from Year 1 – 6 have an iPad. We use this technology to enhance learning wherever possible by increasing pupil engagement, stimulating ambition and curiosity, helping to embed learning and providing an outlet for pupils’ creativity. We also believe it is important to prepare pupils for the increasingly technological society and workplaces of the future. The iPads are used to record significant quantities of children’s learning, using Pages, Keynote, iMovie and other Apps. The use of iPad has also dramatically reduced teacher workload, particularly around feedback. Our innovative use of these devices was recognised in October 2021 when we received the Apple Distinguished School award.
Additional information
Documentation at subject level, including medium term planning and progression documents, can be found in the individual year tabs in this section of the website.
