As they move through school, our aim is for all our children to become increasingly aware of their own strengths as learners and to work on those areas in which they are not so strong.
Our Curriculum Journey
Our curriculum journey begins with a strong emphasis on language development in the Foundation Stage and developing the fundamental early literacy skills into Key Stage 1. We are a Read, Write, Inc school and use this scheme to teach phonics, fluency in reading and spelling strategies. Promoting a love and enjoyment in reading is an important priority from the start to the end of the journey.
We have a ‘maths mastery’ approach to the teaching of mathematics, which is aligned with the White Rose scheme. Running alongside this approach we use Big Maths as a scheme to support children with number fluency right the way through school.
We want our children’s learning to be cemented with rich, memorable and meaningful experiences that make their learning real to them. These experiences are provided in and outside of school with a selection of visits, visitors and experts and residentials that run from Y2 to Y6. At Watercliffe Meadow, we encourage our children to challenge themselves and find where their strengths lie. Our curriculum is also supplemented with sporting events, musical opportunities, the chance to perform on a stage and time for our children to discover what makes them unique; all without discrimination (as stated in the Equality Act 2010).
Well-being is an important underpinning theme in all aspects of the curriculum. We explicitly teach good social and emotional skills in a variety of ways from weekly class Quality Circle Time sessions to the constant re-enforcement of the importance of our Golden Rules. Philosophy for Children (P4C) is used regularly to promote our children’s articulacy and to encourage them to discuss a range of topics relating to the curriculum and subjects such as bullying, climate change and discrimination. P4C is a tool that works within our curriculum subjects, as well as supplementing the Sheffield RSHE lessons and agreed syllabus for RE in Sheffield Schools (2019 – 2024). As stated in our mission statement, we wish for our pupils to use what they are taught to appreciate the wider world, and some of the challenges it faces, and see the importance of working together to make our planet better.
Our curriculum intends to explicitly teach our children knowledge and skills as required by the National Curriculum. We want what we teach at Watercliffe Meadow to be ambitious and for the children to be able to access a progressive curriculum, that develops their understanding of concepts across their time at school. As they grow, we want them to build up their knowledge in order to make links and advance their understanding in a range of subjects and apply this; in addition to prepare the ground for future learning. Clear end points are set within all topics and units, so that our pupils know what they are aiming for, and these are regularly revisited in order to embed all essential components within and across year groups.
As we teach, we want our pupils to regularly reflect on their understanding of key concepts chosen for each topic within history, geography and science – using these as a way for crucial knowledge to be gained. For all subjects, prior knowledge will be taken into consideration and used as a solid foundation for growth.
In order to find out more detailed information about our curriculum, please feel free to email us at office@watercliffe.sheffield.sch.uk .
Our Key Curriculum priorities