The Wilden Curriculum

Curriculum Intent

The curriculum at Wilden Church of England VA Primary School is fundamentally based on the National Curriculum, but we have recognised the need to consider our context and have adapted the content of the curriculum to meet the needs of all children. With St Nicholas Church integral to supporting our children to flourish during their time at Wilden, we celebrate and collaborate with the church and our local community to promote in children a lifelong love of learning.

The core principles of our curriculum are:

• Cultural Diversity. We recognise that in our small village school, children need to be informed and exposed to many different cultures, and so we believe that Black History should be celebrated throughout the school year and not just during Black History month. Each topic has elements of either Black History or other ethnic minority groups to ensure the children are exposed to history and cultures different to their own.
• Spiralised. As children revisit each topic bi-annually,  children are given opportunities to reflect back on prior learning and recap knowledge before being exposed to new  information that widens their knowledge.
• Values based. Wilden's core values are central to ensuring every child can flourish during their time at Wilden. Our core values can be seen throughout the curriculum:

• Love: Children take time and care over presentation, understand the value of learning and progress as well as showing love and kindness within school and the community. School staff show love through nurturing all the children in our care and ensuring every child can make progress.
• Resilience: Children are encouraged to persevere with problems and continually have a go. They use language such as ‘I can’t do this …yet’, ‘What can I do to help myself’. Class teachers have high expectations and continually strive for children to have their own high expectations.
• Inquisitiveness: At the start and during a topic, children are encouraged to develop their own curiosity by asking questions about their learning and topics.
• Courage: Facing new challenges such as activities in Forest School, attending inter-school sporting tournaments, residential trips, attending debating competitions as well as Speech and Drama competitions sometimes means children face new experiences for which they need tenacity and determination.
• Generosity: Children are regularly exposed to current affairs through class discussions and news reports. Class teachers will often link this to their current learning and children often show empathy and respect for the communities affected and also understand how their Courage and Generosity can make an impact. The school council is keen to show generosity when raising money for charity fundraisers.

• Forest School. This is an integral part of becoming a flourishing child, as children apply all our core values to their experience in forest school and often face challenges that are new to them. Forest school also provides opportunities for children to practise and improve academic learning, as sessions often closely align with their learning in the classroom.
• Community focused. Wilden has close links to our church community as we regularly visit church for services and invite our local vicar into school to conduct Collective Worship as well as Forest Church. We also work with local Christian groups whereby we visit our local environment to learn about the teachings of the Bible and therefore help others on their journey through Wilden Primary School to follow their path in God’s ever-changing garden.

Curriculum Implementation

In our mixed age classes, a two-year rolling programme is needed; we chose a whole school topic for each term, culminating in six different topics. Although the children revisit the topic three times in their Wilden journey, each stage of the journey allows teachers to recap important skills, challenge children further and develop a wider, in-depth knowledge of the topic. Each topic is planned to involve whole school trips, visitors coming into school or presenting their knowledge in an end of term celebration event for parents to bring alive our learning and understand the importance of it in a real-life context.

Our Early Year's classroom has successfully implemented ‘Planning in the Moment’ and so each term begins with the relevant season and the teachers are fully led by the children and the children guide their own learning. This style of teaching provides opportunities to tailor teaching to meet the children’s individual needs and promotes challenge. Our small numbers ensure staff and pupils create strong relationships with high daily interaction and the use of quality open-ended questioning to identify the children’s starting points and observe their interests. The staff promote strong links with parents and carers to bring their home experiences into the classroom and both family and teachers share learning and experiences using the online platform Tapestry. This allows parents and teachers to view their child’s journey in Early Years.

Whole School Curriculum Overview

	Autumn	Spring	Summer
Year A	In God We Trust	To Infinity & Beyond	A Material World
Year B	Wilden Wanderers	Step Back in Time	An African Adventure

What does the curriculum look like in the classroom?

At Wilden, we understand the importance of delivering a curriculum that is well-matched to the child’s needs and ability. In order to do this, we need to check on the child’s prior knowledge. What can they remember from the previous class or topic? Are they ready for new learning and challenges? Our highly experienced teachers use a range of techniques in the classroom to encourage children to retain new knowledge and make connections between subjects and topics to then be able to be ready for their new learning. Teaching will include:

Class teachers also reflect on their own knowledge of the class and use other strategies to promote knowledge retention, such as online quizzes, games in class and whole class discussions led by the children.