In devising our curriculum at Castle Primary School we initially sought the views of our pupils, parents and staff to ensure we could develop a curriculum based on shared vision. This vision would aim to meet the needs of our community, prepare our pupils for wherever their future takes them and to create lifelong learners.
From these discussions, it was felt strongly that our curriculum should be based on hands-on experience, should help the children to understand how they learn, make use of our unique locality and reflect our local history, including that of the school itself. It should develop social and emotional understanding so that we encourage the development of independent, resilient and empathetic learners. In doing so, we aim for a curriculum that is relevant, purposeful and engaging for all of our pupils.
In order to give our pupils the necessary skills and cultural capital needed to succeed in life, we want them to dig deep in their learning and give them the opportunity to be fully immersed within a subject area. The National Curriculum gives children a good introduction to the essential knowledge they need, but it is our belief that to create truly independent learners we need to offer them the freedom to delve deeper and encourage the natural curiosity with which they start their educational journey. In order for us to do this, we teach through a curriculum of discovery.
Our discovery lessons have one main driver, chosen from the key foundation subject areas of science, geography, history and design & technology. This driver remains the same for a full half term period, alongside further stand-alone units for science, DT and art, as well as RE, music, and drama. This ensures we are able to help our pupils to become scientists, geographers, historians, designers, as well as artists, musicians and performers, and to have an understanding of people of faith.
By allowing this immersion, we are able to foster and promote resilience, as well as to make sure that learning ‘sticks’ by making connections, extending learning and exploring topics fully. Children know and understand the subject that they are learning, and teachers are able to plan a more purposeful learning journey that has a clear and sequenced progression of knowledge and skills. Across the year, children will experience this depth of learning across the curriculum, with subjects such as English, maths, PE, computing and PSHE being taught as continuous units alongside.
