Our Curriculum
The curriculum is all the planned activities we organise in order to promote learning, personal growth and development. It includes not only the formal requirements of the National Curriculum, but also the range of learning experiences that facilitate a magical place of learning. We aim to teach children how to grow into positive, responsible people, who can work and co-operate with others while developing knowledge and skills, to help pupils become the very best that they can be.
At Silchester, we aim to equip pupils to make a positive contribution to society in the future through a rich, broad and engaging curriculum which inspires all pupils to learn through the acquisition of knowledge & skills with the school values at its core.
We ensure that our curriculum retains the integrity of each individual subject throughout the school. Each subject is valued and has its own intent to ensure integrity, broad coverage and progression throughout the primary curriculum.
The infographic below details how our intent, implementation and impact is formed around our collective vision, values and aim.
Our Curriculum Principles
When developing the Silchester Curriculum, the following principles guide our decision making.
Empowering
We provide an inclusive education within a culture of support and high expectation. All staff work together to nurture and support children, ensuring they feel happy, safe and cared for in school. Through our curriculum we aim to empower all children to contribute to school life, the wider world and make a difference.
Engaging
Ensuring that learning is vivid and real is paramount to us at Silchester because we want our children to develop understanding through enquiry, creativity, use of technologies and learning behaviours. Exciting memories often stick with us for longer. We foster thinking skills to make learning interesting, flexible and inventive. We create an effective environment to embed learning skills across a range of subjects, using a varied approach and a variety of learning techniques to create and maintain a ‘love of learning’.
Challenging
We plan and adapt our curriculum to ensure it provides children with challenge and the need to be bold and resilient. Our curriculum is contains a plethora of opportunities for all children to experience ‘desirable difficulties’ where they will have to engage in deep learning. We foster a growth mindset, modelling and discussing perseverance which supports all children to tackle challenge. We use a wide range of questioning and apply high order thinking tasks that allow children to solve problems both independently and collaboratively. We aim for every child to embrace challenge and recognise that this is a fundamental part of effective learning
Creative
Our curriculum supports children to develop an open mind. Through positive interaction and relationships, children think carefully, crafting their own opinions and examining their ideas. We support children to develop and use their imagination to explore new possibilities, and to make connection between existing thought and new learning. Creative expression and ‘outside of the box’ thinking is encouraged and celebrated.
Holistic
At Silchester, our curriculum is intended and implemented to develop the whole child. By embedding our core Christian values throughout our curriculum, we provide children with the opportunity to develop their sense of self and belonging, to build their character, and skillset for courageous advocacy. Opportunities for teaching and promoting wellbeing are important as we set out to support our children to have strong sense of wellbeing, be self-aware and able to self-regulate. We strive for children to desire and develop confidence to be themselves, supporting them to contribute to society recognising the value of their unique self.
Progressive
Our curriculum includes a set of knowledge, skills and experiences which build on one another, developing the children’s learning sequentially and progressively. Each step in our curriculum takes into account the children’s prior learning on which to build the new knowledge, skills and experiences. The curriculum enables revisiting of previous learning and fostering children to make connections and links to new learning.
Our Curriculum Approach
What do we believe is the purpose of curriculum?
At Silchester, we believe the purpose of curriculum to enable our children to become confident in their own self-worth and resilient in overcoming the obstacles they face. We want all our children to develop their skills, learning, memories of experiences and positive relationships which will empower them to contribute to the wider world and make a difference. We aim for our children to be lifelong learners who are grounded in our core Christian values of compassion, courage and respect, and ready to embrace their next step – whatever that may be!
How do we design our curriculum?
For our children to develop their skills and learning, we focus on a ‘less is more’ approach, teaching less in greater depth. For example, throughout their Silchester journey, the children will study five key artists. By choosing only five, and revisiting these artists through their years, the children can build on their knowledge and take their learning deeper.
In order to achieve this ‘less is more’ approach, each subject has three or four golden threads (linked to the National Curriculum). The golden threads are the main themes which run through that subject throughout the school. These support a clear focus in this subject‘s intent (vision) and progression through each golden thread.
Within each golden thread, there is key knowledge (and vocabulary) which has been identified as the focus for the main learning and other aspects are taught through a light touch. At Silchester, we believe all skills require knowledge and therefore our curriculum focuses on building this knowledge and then applying it to achieve skills. The key knowledge is built into progression
All learning is taught through learning journeys, which teachers plan with ‘the end point in mind’. Each learning journey will begin with a hook and have a clearly defined purposeful, meaningful outcome. At Silchester, teachers explicitly share the learning journey and outcome with the children. We believe the children having clarity in what they are learning and why is very important to develop ownership and engagement.
In our curriculum, subjects are taught discretely with connections made through golden threads. For example, when studying the golden thread ‘world history’ children will draw on their knowledge of already learnt ancient civilisations to make comparisons between their new learning on ancient civilisations.
