WCM Priorities

The World is Ours

Watercliffe Meadow is a happy, caring place for learning.
Everyone has the chance to explore, discover and develop their unique
qualities, skills, gifts and talents.
We feel good about who we are.
Together, we can help to make the world a better place.

This is our ‘mission statement’. Staff, children, parents and governors all worked together to create these simple statements that explain what we are about and what our vision and aims are for our learning community.

Throughout their curriculum journey at Watercliffe Meadow, our intent is to enable our children to achieve their potential so that they not only thrive in the next stage of their education beyond primary, but also we help them to find their place in the world and are be able to flourish within it. To do this, we know that we must provide a stable and caring environment where learning is valued, and where children (and adults) have access to a wide range of exciting learning opportunities that will help them develop their knowledge, skills and attitudes so that everyone can become successful and content in life.

During 2010 and 2011 we worked with Jane Reed (from the London Institute of Education), to devise a set of 10 ‘learning principles’ that highlight the learning behaviours we wanted to develop in all our children.

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

At Watercliffe Meadow children:
1. Become competent and fluent readers and develop a love of reading.
2. Are confident mathematicians capable of problem solving and manipulating numbers.
3. Are skillful writers able to produce cohesive pieces for a range of audiences and purposes using accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar.
4. Develop a broad understanding of important concepts, knowledge and skills across the National Curriculum.
5. Are exposed to a wide range of curriculum experiences to enable them to find and develop their strengths and passions.
6. Become critical thinkers and self-motivated learners.

Our Inclusion Priorities

We hope that everyone who comes to Watercliffe Meadow finds it to be a warm, welcoming and friendly place. For children, staff, families and other visitors we want it to have a ‘homely feel’ where everyone respects and appreciates each other and where everyone can see that learning is valued.

At Watercliffe Meadow:
1. Attendance is not a barrier to learning.
2. Provision for children with SEND meets their needs and ensures that they make good progress in line with, or above, their cognitive ability.
3. Children in receipt of pupil premium make progress in line with or better than national outcomes.
4. Children are good citizens with an appreciation and understanding of ‘British values’ and global issues.
5. Children are positive and polite and work well with others

Our Health and Well-being Priorities

In order to achieve our curriculum and inclusion priorities we appreciate that children need to be both physically and emotionally healthy. They need to feel safe, have good self-esteem and develop a good level of resilience to enable them to fulfil their own potential.

At Watercliffe Meadow:
1. Robust safeguarding systems are in place and impact positively on our vulnerable children and families.
2. Children develop emotional resilience through planned curriculum opportunities.
3. Children become confident learners and develop an awareness and understanding of their own strengths and areas for improvement
4. Children understand what they should do to be physically healthy and have daily opportunities to keep physically fit.