The curriculum at Westroyd is driven by an approach through which all children can achieve high standards and make good progress building on their prior learning. Embedding key skills is at the heart of a well-balanced, engaging curriculum which allows children to become motivated, successful and lifelong learners. We believe that children need to have fun, engage in exciting first-hand experiences and have a love of learning. Our curriculum provides opportunities for children to learn about our diverse, local and global community in order for them to develop understanding and respect to be a good citizen.
At the heart of the school's curriculum ASPIRE learning poster, which promotes all the characteristics of a positive learner:
Ambitious
Successful
Positive
Independent
Resilient
Enthusiastic
We strive to deliver a curriculum that meets the needs of our pupils. We want to ensure that we provide a curriculum that:
Our aim is to enthuse all learners including some of our more vulnerable groups of learners: boy learners, pupils with special educational needs, disadvantaged pupils and some of our quieter passive learners. We strive for strong participation in all lessons and encourage children to demonstrate resilience and independence. In order to help us do that, our ASPIRE learning poster drives our learning culture.
Rewards via our 'Trackit' system recognise and celebrate when children demonstrate these learning qualities on a daily basis. These attributes are also highlighted in our end of week celebration assembly when awarding the 'Westroyd Learners' certificates.
Throughout our topics, teachers provide hands-on activities and plan in visits and visitors in order to ensure that the learning is experiential, meaningful, enjoyable and memorable. We aim to broaden the children's experiences both in and out of the classroom.
At Westroyd, we link subjects through topics but only when the learning enables us to do so. Some subjects (for example PE or computing) will be taught as stand alone. Shaping our learning this way allows pupils to apply skills and knowledge across the curriculum which will increase the opportunity to embed this learning. Although we link subjects, we feel that it is important not to lose the identity of each individual subject and that children are clear of the subject skills, knowledge and vocabulary that they are learning. Our working walls support us with this.
Our topics are led by an enquiry style question, which children answer through smaller units of work or questions throughout the term. At the end of a topic, children are given an outcome task which enables them to demonstrate both the knowledge and skills they have developed during this unit of teaching.
We celebrate the learning that has taken place through our open sessions as well as sharing via the learning platforms Tapestry and Seesaw. This ensures that we are able to highlight the learning in all of our foundation subjects.
The Social, Emotional, Mental Health (SEMH) of a child is crucial to their education. Our PSHE scheme of work is vital to supporting children with this and helps them to be self-reflective. It also teachers them what to do if they need help. In our Early Years, the Personal, Social and Emotional development of the children is key to their overall learning and children are given personal targets in this area.
Our wonderful Pastoral Lead plays a key role in providing support with personal and social development outside the curriculum. Children can access the Pastoral Lead as a drop-in provision or through a targeted programme to help children with PSHE targets.
Planned focus weeks and days also provide opportunities for us to develop children's key life-skills. Our 'Be Healthy and Safe Week', provides opportunities for us to teach important skills such as road safety and water safety. Alongside this, children learn about their own mental health and wellbeing, and activities which can support these in daily life.
At Westroyd we celebrate our similarities and differences and ensure that we respect diversity. Through our curriculum and collective worship, we expose our children to different cultures, faiths and backgrounds as well as challenging stereotypes. To support this we plan in focus weeks such as Black History Week and Inter-Faith Week, and we feel that this is particularly important as the vast majority of our school community is White-British.
Through our 'Primary Picture News' resource, children are given the opportunity to discuss current issues linked to our British Values; Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect, Democracy and Rule of Law.
Our children are given the opportunity to make a positive contribution to our school community through roles such as school council, class buddies, and digital and play leaders. Organising fundraising events and forming links with our local community help our children to think about the wider role of being a good citizen.
The document below outlines Westroyd's Curriculum Intent. We have identified the pupils' needs which helps us identify how we shape our curriculum Implementation. The curriculum implementation outlines the content and approaches we are developing in order to meet the needs of our pupils. We measure the Impact of our curriculum approach through a range of methods. We want to ensure that our pupils are not only progressing academically but also as well-rounded citizens.