Westmorland Primary School Curriculum Intent

At Westmorland Primary School, teaching is more than the National Curriculum. Our children come to a school where they, and the community, are the forefront of everything we do: where they learn what behaviours are needed to succeed in life, how to regulate their emotions and love to learn. We have created a bespoke curriculum designed to help every child achieve to the best of their ability. Our curriculum is designed to promote enquiry, exploration and knowledge from each child’s starting point. We have broken down the National Curriculum objectives into smaller skills to ensure children have a breadth of learning and gain a full understanding of their subjects. Children are taught subjects discreetly, which are carefully interconnected, to make links between learning and to enable children to gain a deeper understanding of a specific theme. Children are encouraged to be active, discuss their thoughts and put across their point of view, and are guided to review and revisit their learning to ensure their skills and knowledge are enhanced. Children thrive on learning and using new vocabulary daily and they are empowered to communicate and collaborate – oracy is at the heart of everything we do. Every child needs to articulate themselves to the highest level before being able to set themselves a pathway to academic success. At Westmorland Primary School, we set high expectations for each child in each lesson and encourage them to be intrinsically motivated enough to set themselves goals and work to a standard they can be proud of. Our curriculum is designed to immerse children in first hand experiences to allow them to apply their learning to different contexts and situations. Children use the learning environments in school to become their own character, a friend, a talker, a learner, and most importantly, learn how to be the best child they can be. All whilst building a foundation of skills, knowledge and characteristics to flourish in later life, and succeed in their hopes and dreams. At Westmorland Primary School, our children are given MORE (Memorable learning, Oracy, Reading skills, Experiences) and can dream MORE.

Westmorland Primary School Curriculum Implementation

At Westmorland Primary School, we have carefully interlinked subjects to ensure children gain a broader, deeper knowledge of a topic, whilst understanding the objectives for each subject as separate skills, which can be used and applied in a range of situations. At the heart of the curriculum in every classroom – you will see MORE. Memorable learning, Oracy, Reading and Experiences. These provide the basis for our children’s learning, and having them weaved in to our daily teaching and learning enables the children to practice, revisit and apply skills consistently. The mornings in our school are heavily focussed on English and Maths skills – our children can articulate they enjoy the structure of English and Maths lessons in a morning. In an afternoon, children are engaged in purposeful topic based lessons, often linking to the English and Maths curriculum to gain both a deeper understanding and to apply their learning. Children are encouraged to use the skills they have been taught to be creative, exploratory, curious learners. Our children like to learn in a practical way, so we provide as many real life experiences as possible, learning through doing rather than listening, with a wide range of resources, visitors, educational trips out. We provide countless opportunities for children to talk through their learning and articulate what they know, to develop their confidence. This sets a platform for children to have their work valued by the staff team and their family members, and take ownership of what they know. We employ a Speech and Language Therapist 3 days a week to work 1:1 with children and parents to develop oracy further. To ensure the curriculum is not narrowed for any children, the curriculum map sets out the objectives needed to be covered under an overarching theme. This brings the subjects to life, and teachers are skilled in using Makaton, Talk for Writing, Drama and ‘quizzes’ to do this. This is all further enhanced by a wider curriculum that includes breakfast clubs, workshops with parents, after school sports, the farm and life skills groups. SEN children are set achievable targets in SEN support plans per term, which fill gaps in their learning and help them progress in all areas of their life. The EYFS curriculum ensures children are equipped with as many characteristics of learning as possible, to help them to develop independence. Children on entry have significantly low baselines, and staff and children work tirelessly to build a solid foundation for children’s learning. As our pupils get older and move through the school, they make great progress and enjoy their learning.