Curriculum Overview

Intent for the Curriculum

At Warren Mead, our main aim for a child’s learning experience is to achieve, succeed and develop a love of learning which they can build upon year on year. This will help prepare them for the ever-changing world they live in. Our curriculum offer:

• Sets high expectations
• Inspires and motivates
• Avoids cognitive overload
• Focuses on depth of learning
• Prepares the children for the next phase of their education
• Equips the children with the knowledge and cultural capital that they need to succeed in life
• Follows the objectives set out in the National Curriculum.

Our vision statement ‘Working together to aspire and achieve, now and in the future’ encompasses what we as a school community strive to achieve. Underpinning our curriculum are the Warren Mead Values which we put high importance upon for our children and the school community. It is our primary aim to develop well-rounded, considerate learners who:

• have aspiration for themselves and their achievements,
• have resilience to embrace their mistakes as part of the learning process,
• value the importance of effort and have pride in themselves and what they are good at.

This will help them to achieve, while at Warren Mead and beyond.

Implementation of our Curriculum

With high aspirations and expectations for our children, our curriculum offer has been built using carefully chosen discrete curriculums for each subject which are taught within timetabled slots. This approach both fulfils and deepens content within the National Curriculum. However, we believe that strong and purposeful links in learning play a vital part in strengthening children’s learning and connections are therefore made between subjects where it is beneficial to do so.

Our choice of aspirational curriculums are specifically chosen for our community to ensure the children become proficient in each subject and have the knowledge and skills that are needed to move into the next chapter of their schooling. Although different curriculums have been chosen, they all have explicit instruction at the heart of the teaching within them. They are:

• deliberately sequenced for robust progression as the children move through the years and knowledge and skills are built upon from unit to unit and lesson to lesson. New content is sequenced logically and precisely to ensure it is manageable for learners and it pulls on prior learning experiences.
• explicitly develop and progress children’s knowledge and skills through regular revisiting and building upon prior learning to develop automatic recall of knowledge and information, freeing up their working memory for new learning.
• Ensure that learning is taught in small steps, both within lessons and across units. Teachers break down the children’s learning into small steps to ensure that the cognitive load is manageable for our learners resulting in it transferring to long term memory.
• Require precise and high quality modelling and direct teaching of worked examples. The teaching point is verbalised, modelled and explained, guided using examples and then practised before independent application. This scaffolds and supports the children to understand the teaching content in a low-risk / high-impact manner.
• Scaffold learning in lessons, while providing appropriate levels of challenge. Scaffolding all learners is key in ensuring that they have a thorough and deep understanding of the learning before moving on.

 

At Warren Mead, we use the following Curriculums:

Maths	GLF mastery curriculum
English-Writing	National Curriculum objectives using a Learning Journey approach
English-Reading	CUSP Unity
English-Phonics	RWI
English-Spelling	CUSP
English-Handwriting	Nelson
Science/History/Geography/Art/Design Technology	GLF Primary Curriculum
Computing	Purple Mash Curriculum
RE	Discovery RE
PE	Val Sabin-Gym Getset4PE-other areas of PE, including Games, Dance, orienteering
Music	Charanga
MFL	Language Angels (Spanish)

 

All teachers with adequate experience are responsible for the development and improvement of a subject area across the curriculum. Each subject has a clear intent for its teaching and method of implementation which is formulated in line with our vision, values and overall curriculum intent.

 

Impact of the Curriculum

As a result of our curriculum and our teaching and learning offer being based on research and strong pedagogy, children leave Warren Mead with the skills and confidence to be who they want to be and being prepared for the next stage of their education. Children leave us having achieved strong academic achievement and enriched opportunities and experiences, both linked to learning and the wider world.

Specialist Teaching
Children experience high quality, specialist lessons in PE which are delivered by subject experts in specialist environments.

Opportunities And Enrichment
Children experience a wide range of trips and visits across their journey at Warren Mead, in addition to Wow days where they are absorbed into practical and hands-on learning in a variety of subjects e.g. Roman Day.  This ensures that our curriculum offer is enriched and exciting for the children, while not detracting from the knowledge and skills being taught.

Children are immersed into additional planned learning opportunities through curriculum weeks. We celebrate Enterprise Week in December, World Book Week in March, Science week in April and Arts week in June.  Where additional opportunities arise to enhance and broaden learning for our children, they are taken e.g. Jubilee Day, Coronation celebrations.

Children are also given a number of progressive opportunities to take part in both overnight trips and residential trips and visits.

Clubs
Children are offered a range of clubs which are further developing in variety. External organisations provide opportunities for children to learn new sports including dodgeball, football, dance, gymnastics as well as taking part in a small band. 

Sports Opportunities And Events
Children are given a high quality PE curriculum with a PE specialist teacher on a weekly basis focussed on developing sporting skills as well as knowledge of sports and games. In addition, children are encouraged to take part and attend external sporting events such as borough sports event, local sporting tournaments and all children take part in an annual sports day.

Community

Children are given regular opportunities to learn and support a range of organisations and charities, both local and National. These experiences involve annual house events where each house organises an event to support an allocated charity, e.g. Luther King house supported Save the children Christmas jumper day and Curie house organised a Children in Need fundraiser.