• To cover the requirements of the National Curriculum and RE in a way that is relevant and engaging, with each subject distinct to the children, but the acquisition of learning from each, where appropriate, being linked and applied to a common purpose (‘Big Question’ and ‘Outcome’).
   
• To have high expectations of all children, giving them the opportunity to excel in many different ways – an open-ended curriculum, with understanding that learning will be shared, often through gentle competition, public speaking, with an audience and for a purpose.
   
• To increase the children’s knowledge of their local area and community, and how this compares and contrasts with the experience and contributions of diverse people living in different places and at different times, giving children a sense of both appreciation and of responsibility. Promoting diversity, inclusion and equality.
   
• To reinforce the Christian distinctiveness of the school with clear consideration of how our ABC values are woven into the taught curriculum, so that our children are given a good understanding of Achieving (through wisdom and perseverance), Belonging (through respect and friendship) and Caring (through caring and compassion) along with structured opportunity to put these into action.
   
• To support the well-being of children through specific themes (such as Cycle B Summer Term), varied and enjoyable experiences, providing opportunity to excel in a range of areas including creative and sport, time to reflect and RHSE.
   
• To enhance and capitalise on the family-feel of the school – a community of learning, achieving and contributing by having whole school themes and big questions with final learning and outcomes shared. This will also enable the school to accommodate changes in class structures without repeated or missed learning and enable the staff to work in teams.
   
• To increase retention of knowledge through a clear spiral of learning and regular reference to where new learning links to prior learning. Components building over time and leading to carefully designed composite tasks, with pupils applying their acquired learning.

The curriculum is spread over a 2-year cycle, to allow for mixed year group classes in future years and to enable team planning.

Each term begins with a whole school question – this is then further broken down into an enquiry question for each team – Orchard (YR, 1 and 2), Woodland (Y3 and 4) and Forest (Y5 and 6).

Although lessons are taught as discrete subjects, children will be told when the lesson is supporting them in reaching an answer to their question so that the lessons are purposeful and links to prior learning are made.

At the end of the term, children have a final outcome in which their learning is shared and the answer to their team’s and the whole school question is agreed.

As the whole school work on a whole school question and share their learning, over the 7 years in school, children will be thinking back to and making links to and building upon the learning they experienced themselves and heard from older children.

Not all subject areas naturally link into enquiry questions, but many have skills that will naturally support. For example, IT skills can be used to research and present learning for the enquiry, but computing need to be taught separately. Subjects usually planned separately are: Maths, Phonics, SPAG, Computing, RSHE, PE, MFL.

Teachers are given time termly to work in their planning teams to share ideas and expertise. They work from the termly framework document, supported by the subject knowledge progression maps to ensure coverage and progression.

This curriculum is evolving and needs to do so to keep pace with our changing world – where teachers have a new idea (for example a different text or artist to study) this is discussed and agreed with the subject leader.

Our topics are literature-rich with teachers using high-quality texts to engage and enrich children’s learning and to instil a love of reading.

Our curriculum is enriched by visitors, visits and residentials. This includes working with the local community.

Curriculum work begins in Foundation Stage, as part of the Orchard Team, with the Foundation Stage curriculum being linked to the team enquiry in a way that leads to their developmental needs. They will then revisit this in Year 2, when they will be able to build in depth on their existing knowledge.

The curriculum is supplemented by special theme days and weeks. These are planned for a variety of reasons, such as national or community events, Christian festivals or for coverage of the curriculum and include Science Week, Sports Week, Odd Socks Day and Internet Safety Day.

In addition, a range of clubs are available, including choir, recorders, drama, sports and Spanish.