At Apley Wood Primary Academy we deliver an imaginative and inspiring curriculum with a focus on knowledge and skills. We aim to develop independence to ensure our children understand the diversity of the world around us and their place within it. To do this we have a strong ethos of hard work coupled with fun and engaging learning opportunities. We have strong links with our local community and operate an open door policy inviting the school community and external visitors into our school frequently.
Intent
What is our Intent? What are we trying to achieve with our curriculum?
At Apley Wood Primary Academy our aim is to ensure that the curriculum offer provides a range of opportunities and experiences to develop the whole child. With our motto of ‘feed the mind and free the imagination’ our curriculum is designed to provide our children with the knowledge appropriate to their year group, and also the skills to enable them to be successful across the curriculum. Alongside the range of substantive and disciplinary knowledge, we also teach the skills of Building Learning Power in order to develop life long learners. This captures the inclusive nature and high aspirations of our school.
Throughout our curriculum we aim to promote an understanding of our local community and local issues whilst also linking these to sustainability and an awareness of wider global issues in order to prepare children with the knowledge and skills needed for later life.
We want all of our pupils to be ready for the next stage of their learning, we set high expectations for achievement in that at least 85% of children achieve age related expectations and we want our pupils to leave Apley Wood Primary Academy being ‘secondary ready’.
Implementation
How do we deliver and assess our curriculum?
Our curriculum teaches the key substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge (skills) children need through exciting and engaging learning opportunities both within school and out: lessons, enrichment weeks, assemblies, extra curricular activities, sports, Arts, visits, workshops, residentials, and fundraising.
How do we accomplish this?
The curriculum is designed for the year, in termly themes, that cover the different types of knowledge. We have progression documents for each subject to ensure the different types of knowledge and skills are sequential, building on the previous years learning. Our assessment documents clearly identify the key learning required by the end of each unit of work. In addition to this, we identify and assess the key vocabulary that our pupils should know and understand for each unit of work.
Through our teaching, we ensure that children know and remember more by revisiting prior learning and making links between subjects and knowledge whenever possible. Children are given regular opportunities to apply their knowledge in different contexts and explain their understanding to others.
Impact
Impact. What is the Impact of our curriculum? What difference is our curriculum making to our pupils?
School leaders, Governors and teachers regularly measure the impact of our curriculum through the monitoring of teaching and learning, monitoring of behaviour, assessment and on-going self review. We talk to children and parents, we undertake learning walks, we look at books and we review the curriculum as subject leaders. We aim for the impact to be that our children will be academically prepared for the next phase of their education, are motivated to succeed and achieve and are equipped with all the personal skills to do this.
Read more about our curriculum on the pages below:
Pupil feedback makes the biggest possible difference in supporting learning and helping children make the best possible progress. This comes in a variety of forms from verbal feedback, pupil self-assessment and feedback in marking. At Apley Wood we are proud of the way we have developed a culture of feedback. We provide children with opportunities to address misconceptions (‘Close the Gap’ tasks), offering them extension tasks (which can be in the form of ‘Convince me..’ statements) and next steps.