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 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.

Westmorland Primary School Impact

The impact of the school’s INTENT and IMPLEMENTATION on our children will be clear. They will show progress from their starting points, they will be able to remember their learning and will be able to take charge of their own learning.
The quality of IMPACT can be evidenced through pupil voice – come and speak to our children and ask them what they have been learning! This will be evidenced through children’s books, floor books, displays, and just being in school and seeing the buzz of our Westmorland Warriors.
Children follow a bespoke curriculum that is designed to enrich the learning opportunities that are offered to them. This ensures that all children are immersed in an opportunity rich curriculum, to develop engagement, motivation and understanding. This, in turn, develops children’s understanding and lets them learn through doing things.
Phonics, segmenting and blending, decoding and comprehension underpin the curriculum in EYFS and KS1 and the impact of this can be evidenced through children becoming fluent, confident readers at age related expectations.
School staff give feedback in every lesson in order to develop children’s thinking and understanding of what they are learning. Assessment for Learning is at the forefront of what we do, and their learning is carefully monitored from all staff. Interventions are carefully planned for, and progress measured in all areas of the national curriculum, plus other areas including social skills, emotional wellbeing, vocabulary and language and self-confidence.
The longer term impact will show children’s progress levels rising, which then will increase results against starting points. Alongside the academic results and progress, every member of staff at Westmorland is committed to ensuring that all our children gain the skills to succeed in life, past primary school, to enable them to achieve to their highest level. We strive to enable children to be confident, valuable members of the community when they grow up.
At Westmorland Primary school, we work closely with children, parents and stakeholders to ensure everyone achieves. All children aspire to show the WARRIOR values on a daily basis, and parents and stakeholders are included in this. We capture parent and pupil voice through meetings, informal discussions, support plans, parents evening and our open door policy. We have created a community which has brought everyone in this school together, and we are all working together to create the best learning environment and offer for all our families.
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