At Wisewood, our intent is to enable children to enjoy a rich and broad understanding of key knowledge and skills through the delivery of a purposeful, engaging curriculum. We encourage pupils to challenge themselves, build resilience and become creative, critical thinkers.

We have designed our curriculum to ensure all children have the broad and balanced knowledge they need in order to succeed. The curriculum is based on four key principals which provide pupils with the knowledge, skills and concepts they need to successfully transition to the next stage of their education:

Memory

Children are given the opportunity to revisit prior learning on a daily basis. We know that the planned repetition of key knowledge is essential in embedding long-term memory.  We achieve this by:

• Delivering daily retrieval practise of ‘sticky knowledge.’

• Ensuring teachers complete regular low stakes testing on ‘what children should already know.'

• Providing opportunities for children to make links with what they already know – their family, the wider world and things they have read.

• Providing opportunities for children to explain and reflect up on their learning in different contexts, including home learning.

Sequencing

The delivery of the curriculum is planned so that new knowledge and skills build upon what has been learnt before. We do this by:

• ·Basing our curriculum map on the National Curriculum which is age-appropriate and ordered.
• Planning units of work which build upon prior knowledge and skills.
• Ensuring teachers are aware of the ‘end point’ for children’s learning. This may be the end point of a unit of work, end of year group or key stage expectations.
• Ensuring children have the appropriate knowledge and skills to progress to secondary school.

Fluency

The curriculum is planned to provide opportunities to develop fluency in key skills. Knowledge is so deeply embedded that children can quickly and accurately apply skills to a range of contexts. We do this by:

• Daily teaching of key skills including times tables, arithmetic and phonics.
• Repetition of ‘Sticky Knowledge’ through low stakes testing.
• Opportunities for children to apply key skills to reasoning and problem-solving activities.

Challenge

 The curriculum is designed so that all children, regardless of their starting point, ask questions, are curious about their learning and develop an enquiring mind. We do this by:

• Ensuring the curriculum and activities children complete are ambitious and provide appropriate challenge for all pupils.
• Encourage children to show resilience when faced with a difficult problem or task.
• Encourage and model how to ask questions to extend their learning.
• Actively encouraging children to assess their own learning and find areas for improvement and planning in opportunities for children to edit and improve their work.