Skip to content ↓

Curriculum Intent, Implementation and Impact

Rationale

At Hewens Primary School, we have designed and implemented a new curriculum which is built to provide our children with the best educational start in life. Our curriculum considers the needs of a 21st Century child and is ambitious in providing our children with the knowledge, skills and learning behaviours required to become successful life-long learners.

Intent

At the heart of our school are a set of core values. These underpin our curriculum and the ethos of the school. At Hewens Primary, we place great importance on a curriculum which develops the whole child. Through our core values, we foster an environment where the emotional, physical, academic, social, moral, spiritual and cultural development of each child is considered. We firmly believe that everyone is entitled to an ambitious curriculum and our curriculum design is accessible for all, including children with SEND and disadvantaged backgrounds.

Implementation

Implementation describes the way in which we deliver our intent consistently each day. To do this we have carefully designed our knowledge engaged curriculum. This is designed to enable learners to acquire relevant subject knowledge which underpins the application of skills. Skills are carefully and progressively mapped across each key stage and subject area.
Knowledge is consolidated and built upon to support retention and recall and is clearly outlined on Knowledge Organisers for History, Geography and Science. This ensures that by the time children leave our school they have learned, and are able to recall and apply the key information that we feel is important in order for them to be successful in the future.

Enquiry Drivers in Foundation Subjects

Knowledge is taught through an enquiry driver. This driver consists of a key question that the children are unable to answer at the beginning of a unit. Teaching provides the children with the knowledge and skills to provide or demonstrate a response to this enquiry driver by the end  of the unit.

How do we Plan for the Knowledge Engaged Curriculum?

Planning is led by the enquiry driver, which staff use to plan a series of lessons, which aim to answer the enquiry driver question. Subject leaders known as the Curriculum Implementation Team are integral to the planning process and understand the pathway that their subjects take. Progression of knowledge and skills is carefully mapped across Key Stages.

Enhanced Curriculum

Our enhanced curriculum aims to run alongside and compliments the National Curriculum, but aims to broaden the horizons of our children and links to our school's value. The opportunities offered aims to provide our children with unique experiences outside of the National Curriculum.
We broaden horizons by developing global learners, which underpins all of our values, by planning for opportunities to be aware of the wider world and its current issues and to understand and respect cultural diversity and differences with an understanding of how the world works and encourage participation in the community at a range of levels, from the local to the global. We teach our children to make the world a more sustainable place and to take responsibility for their actions. We do this by providing learning linked to:

  • International or Cultural understanding
  • Respect for others and our differences
  • Community participation (local and global)
  • Sustainability and environmental issues
  • Challenging stereotypes

How do we plan for Cultural Capital?

Cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, attitudes, habits, language and possessions that enables individuals to demonstrate their cultural competence and social status.
Hewens Primary plays a crucial role in developing cultural capital through immersing children in debates, dance and music, school trips, quizzes, performing arts, sporting activities and by introducing them to literature and art from different cultural backgrounds.
Embedding cultural capital into our curriculum is a way of closing the gap between children from differing socio-economic backgrounds by ensuring that children form all backgrounds have the same opportunities in society to achieve their full potential. Thus, we have planned activities each term for all pupils to participate and experience as individuals, classes, year groups, key stage and alliance groups.

Impact

Pupils leave Hewens Primary School with a secure understanding of the academic content; with the understanding of how to be socially, morally, spiritually and culturally responsible and aware; how to make positive contributions to the local community and how to endeavour to be the best that they can be. We aim for all of our children to leave Hewens Primary respectful, skillful, ambitious and with a thirst for life and all it has to offer.