‘Like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not whither; whatever they do prospers. ’ Psalms 1:3
Our Curriculum
Our curriculum is designed to be bespoke to the needs of our children and our local context.
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Intent:
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At West Wittering Parochial CE Primary School our curriculum is designed to enable all of our children to ENJOY learning through interesting and engaging topics. We bring these to life through real life experiences that enable the children to develop their interpersonal skills and develop resilience. Our staff and pupils have a shared understanding of what learning is and how we learn best, through the development of metacognition and Growth Mindset throughout the school, enabling all children to ACHIEVE their potential.
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Our curriculum is very important to us because it is bespoke to the needs of our school and community, it is the national curriculum and beyond. This is one of the many things that is special about us. Our children are passionate about being a ‘Beach School’ and this shapes aspects of our curriculum, for example swimming is such an important component in our PE curriculum, as we are respectful of the seas and oceans and need to learn to be safe in them. We have a curriculum that enables all children to succeed, to ASPIRE the children to ‘Be the best that they can be’. It is constantly being evolved to ensure clear channels of progression and to enable all learners to succeed at all they do. Additionally, our ‘Learner Tools’ equip the children with life long skills they need to build their learning powers.
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Our core values are deeply rooted in all that we do at West Wittering and they are what make us unique. These, along with our carefully planned worships each day, promote a positive environment and provide opportunities to celebrate and praise our children, celebrate diversity and the many things that make our world so special, while also allowing for time to reflect and consider what we are taught through the teachings of the Bible. In addition to our curriculum offer, we have a rich and varied before/after school club opportunities to further develop our children as individuals.
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It is the whole school experience, from our curriculum and the diverse range of extra-curricular club offerings, through to our ethos and values, that make our children who they are.
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We are proud to say our children leave West Wittering Parochial CE Primary School as life-long learners who are resilient and make connections in learning; who are outwardly facing to the wider world and its complex cultures; who are thoughtful, kind and caring members of today’s world.
Implementation:
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Learning and teaching is at the heart of our curriculum design and teachers plan lessons with the teaching of knowledge, skills and vocabulary with both core and foundation at the forefront of their minds. Through the curriculum children are challenged to be curious, to make connections, to be resilient, to persevere and to get involved - these are what we call our 'Learner Tools'. Opportunities are planned in the curriculum for pupils to influence their own learning through appropriate and suitable progressive topics, where the children can identify some parts of the learning they are most interested in.
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Our curriculum is a spiral curriculum and we plan for children to take their own trajectories through this and in order for this to be achieved we use quality assessments of prior learning to identify individual starting points for all of our children. Teaching assistants work closely with teachers to ensure that the needs of all children are met so that each and everyone of our children has the chance to succeed, at whatever level they are working at.
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Our children learn how to learn, they embrace lessons on metacognition from KS1 and they study how their brains work, in order to make them more effective learners themselves. This, mixed with a firm philosophy of Growth Mindset across teh entire school, enable our children to see challenge as a positive and to truly understand what real learning looks like and to be proud of this.
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Impact
We aim for our children to leave with a broad set of skills; a rich base of knowledge and a set of Learner Tools that enable them to ask questions and seek answers to become life long learners. They will leave with a strong sense of belonging; a rich variety of Christian values and a strong concept of well-being that will hopefully make them role models for tomorrows generation. They will develop emotional capacity to reflect more, question more and embrace their own spirituality.
For us it is not about children passing tests, or reaching benchmarks, it is about seeing children develop a love of learning, a thirst for knowledge, the strength of resilience and the confidence to seek answers.
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