Curriculum

At Ridgewell, we aim for every child to be supported to achieve their best and to grow to become independent, courageous and ambitious learners. We are driven by a desire for our children to have a deep connection to the world around them and the confidence and courage to take risks with their learning. Our Forest School and Outdoor Learning sessions are essential to support our children to make connections, be resourceful and also provide quality opportunities for reflection and wellbeing.

We encourage the children to build strong educational and spiritual foundations on which they can continue to build learning long into their futures. As well as increasing knowledge and mastery of understanding of subject content, we will also look at the progression of skills throughout each key stage.

Our curriculum map covers all concept thresholds on a 2-year cycle. Each time a concept is revisited it builds on existing knowledge, supporting our children to make connections, ask questions and become deeper thinkers.

Intent

The school has adopted a spiral curriculum that is organised and sequenced to give children opportunities to practise, re-visit and embed key life-skills, deepening their knowledge. Curriculum themes across the school are aligned to provide greater opportunities for classes to work together.

More-able children are encouraged to extend and deepen their thinking and understanding and support is provided for SEN and disadvantaged children, allowing them to access the curriculum through suitably challenging work, with many opportunities to recap and revisit prior learning.

To provide quality opportunities for reflection and wellbeing, Forest School and outdoor learning experiences play an integral role at Ridgewell and these are woven, where possible, throughout the curriculum.

Children are encouraged to read across school and they are directed to different types of carefully selected books, giving them the opportunity to develop confidence and fluency with ample opportunity to grow their Cultural Capital.

The school aims for all children to leave Ridgewell with respect for all others, wisdom for the decisions they will make, the ability to form strong friendships and hope for their futures.

Through the teaching of Personal Learning skills, the school aims to inspire a growth mindset – encouraging the children with the belief that all abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.

The children are encouraged to be resilient and independent learners who have the courage and confidence to be creative, imaginative, and inspired to develop a deep love for learning.

Implementation

The curriculum map covers concept thresholds (e.g. working “like an author, historian, scientist, artist” etc…) on a 4-year cycle to support the children to broaden the context of their learning. Opportunities for children to experience first-hand learning in and beyond the classroom, e.g. use of school grounds, visits, visitors are planned to help them to make links to the wider world. Children are taught by teachers with a specialism whenever possible.

Units of work are sequenced carefully throughout the curriculum map over a 2-year cycle to ensure that learning is covered at the appropriate age. The units are organised so that all classes are working on a similar theme whenever possible to enable progression to be tracked by teachers.

History and Geography form part of the overarching themes for teaching most terms. In KS2, history themes are part of the 4-year cycle on the curriculum map, but will be taught through age-appropriate skills with lessons following the concepts identified in the milestones.

Impact

Learning is assessed in all areas of the curriculum and tracked through school. Teachers use these to support future planning and to see which skills children demonstrate more/less confidence in.

Pupil Progress Meetings are used at least termly to discuss the progress being made by each child in the school and are attended by the class teachers, head teacher and SENCO.

To measure further the impact that teaching is having, pupil voice is often sought before and after a block of work. Children are encouraged to self-assess their own work, referring to their understanding within the curriculum.

British Values:

Key British Values at Ridgewell:

• Respect
• The Rule Of Law
• Individual Liberty
• Democracy
• Tolerance of those with Different Faiths and Beliefs

Please click on the following link to find out further information about how we teach and support these key British Values.

British Values.docx