Overview

At East Wichel, we deliver an ambitious curriculum that is purposeful and provides rich aspirational opportunities to learn, practise, revisit and develop deep knowledge and skills needed for the future. Our knowledge-rich curriculum is distinctive; it is uniquely challenging and coherent, to ensure that all pupils achieve broad, deep subject expertise. All teachers teach with the aim to ensure pupils' learning stay in their long-term memory. We believe that knowledge underpins and enables the application of skill and thus we strive for children to learn skills alongside valuable knowledge, ensuring that both are explicitly developed.

Our teaching and learning strategies are driven by the quote: 'You have taught them, but have they learnt it?' In order to achieve the outcomes we know they deserve, pupils need to retain the knowledge they acquire during lessons. At East Wichel, we are developing a curriculum with knowledge retention at its core. If nothing has been altered in the long-term memory, nothing has been learned. One way by which we are ensuring that information is committed to the long-memory, is by revisiting the key concepts of each subject by regular low stakes, high challenge quizzes. In addition to this, teachers have identified key concepts from the national curriculum objectives, drawn from the content to be taught within each subject. Teaching is sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been previously taught and children work towards clearly defined end points. Teachers consciously plan lessons so that they can build connections between the existing knowledge pupils have and the new knowledge they need to learn. Learning is brought to life by giving pupils first hand experiences such as school visits, bringing in visitors or virtual experiences.

At East Wichel, we believe reading is the heart of every learning. Therefore teachers maximise every opportunity for pupils to read, by making reading an integral part of every lesson everyday. Reading is also an excellent opportunity to improve pupils’ vocabulary; as a school we place very high importance on developing vocabulary in every subject.

We are a school that is very ambitious for every child regardless of their relative starting points.

Our curriculum is underpinned by our core values of: appreciation, aspiration, integrity, community and love. We have a strong community ethos; we celebrate and take pride in our locality and country as a whole. Pupils are given the opportunity to learn about and visit their locality in order to enhance their knowledge.

Being good global citizens is very important to us as a school; pupils are encouraged to develop the knowledge, skills and values they need to engage with the world and make a difference. They are taught to be aware of and understand the wider world - and their place in it. They learn the importance of taking an active role in their community, and work with others to make our planet more equal, fair and sustainable.

We continue to work relentlessly to achieve our motto, which is to 'educate children today for tomorrow's future'

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Overview