Intent, Implementation and Impact
Curriculum intent:
At Woodlea Primary, we aim for everyone “to be the very best we can be”. We have decided to expand and enhance the breadth of our curriculum by using our woodland setting to enhance and support the teaching and learning as well as incorporating an outdoor learning curriculum.
It is our aim that our new F.O.X. time (Fabulous Outdoor Explorers) will uphold the high standards and expectations that our school sets for its pupils and serve as a cornerstone to increasing their life skills and experiences throughout their primary school education.
The primary aims of our new curriculum are:
- To nurture the whole child
- To develop knowledge, skills and attitudes as well as an enthusiasm for learning
- To deliver a cross curricular approach to learning to make the curriculum come to life
- To provide a purposeful curriculum which will improve children’s life skills and experiences
- To build resilient, determined and independent learners
- To develop children’s personal, social and emotional development
- To encourage collaboration
- To enable children to understand and gain respect for the natural environment and wildlife
- To work alongside our local community and beyond
- For children to love learning and be themselves.
Implementation
To ensure that our F.O.X. time and cross curricular approach reaches the high standards of teaching and learning that we pride ourselves on at Woodlea, we are implementing a progressive curriculum that begins in Reception and continues and grows until its culmination, when children leave in Year 6. F.O.X time sessions will be timetabled weekly to ensure children experience high quality learning in our woodland setting. This will be in addition to separate curriculum outdoor learning the children will engage in with their class teachers. It is through this method that we strive to provide our pupils with the widest range of skills and opportunities available to us. Due to its child led nature and focus on social development, F.O.X. time engages children in a manner that is hard to imitate in the classroom. This creates new opportunities for learning and development that might not be accessed during regular day-to-day schooling. As we know, every child is different, as are their learning habits, something that here at Woodlea we recognise, encourage and utilise. At Woodlea, we are blessed with a beautiful outdoors learning environment. It is here the majority of the learning will take place but it is our aim to also expand our outdoor learning into the wider community and environment to give the children a wider range of experience and allow them to become more familiar with the world surrounding them.
Assessment is ongoing through the relevant cross-curricular themes to inform teachers with their planning, task design and variation. Summative assessments are completed at the end of each term. Assessments are recorded on the schools tracking system which leaders use to identify areas for school improvement.
Impact:
We believe that although our indoor and outdoor learning environment and our robust cross curricular approach and F.O.X. time clearly demonstrates how our children are exposed to our curriculum, the true impact of this can only be seen when our children show that they know more and can remember more about what they have learned. We ensure that our children have plenty of opportunities to meet new concepts and learn in a variety of ways and over an extended period of time so that knowledge and understanding is firmly embedded.
We aim for our children at Woodlea to become more well-rounded and prepared learners and individuals. They will not only be more confident and resilient learners, they will become more caring and supportive peers due to the heavy focus the curriculum places on understanding and generating empathy. This will allow children to be confident in being able to regulate their social, mental, emotional and spiritual health meaning they will perform better in collaborative learning and tasks, arming them with the skills necessary to improve themselves in their schooling career and life in the wider world.
As children grow in confidence in their abilities in both our indoor and outdoor environment, they will begin to understand, assess and manage their own risk and safety. This will allow the children to become more independent and show them that life comes with not only risk but also rewards. It also teaches them what their own limits are and that they can push through them. They will see that sometimes we don’t always get the desired result the first time but that doesn’t make us a failure, it helps us to grow, forcing us to try again in a different way. It encourages problem solving logical thinking and self-reflection and evaluation but most of all the pupils will see that mistakes aren’t failures; they are a part of learning, that they are, ultimately, human.
Finally, we aim for our children to leave us at the end of year 6, having fond memories of their time at Woodlea along with a wealth of knowledge they have gained and ready to face the next chapter in their learning journey.
For our individual subject intent statements, please click on the links below:
Art curriculum intent statement
DT curriculum intent statement
English curriculum intent statement
French curriculum intent statement
Geography curriculum intent statement
History curriculum intent statement
Maths curriculum intent statement
Music curriculum intent statement
PE curriculum intent statement
PSHE curriculum intent statement