Longwick Curriculum
Our Longwick Curriculum
Curriculum Intent
At Longwick, our curriculum is designed to extend opportunity and open children’s eyes to the world beyond their immediate environment. We aim to equip every child with the knowledge, skills, confidence and character they need to live happy, healthy and productive lives and become lifelong learners.
Our broad and balanced curriculum is ambitious for all and is underpinned by our Christian school vision and values. We recognise that we are preparing children for a future world that we cannot yet fully know or predict. For this reason, our curriculum extends beyond academic knowledge. We deliberately provide a rich range of enrichment opportunities and experiences beyond the classroom that broaden horizons, raise aspirations and encourage children to be curious about the world around them.
We place particular value on learning beyond the classroom, giving children the space and time to explore, investigate and develop curiosity about their surroundings. Through these experiences, they can make links with their learning, appreciate the natural world, understand its fragility and develop a growing sense of respect and responsibility for their environment.
Through these experiences, we want our children to develop the confidence to ask questions, explore new ideas, communicate effectively, collaborate with others, solve problems, think creatively and respond positively to challenge and change. We want them to understand and respect people whose lives, cultures, beliefs and experiences may be different from their own and to grow into thoughtful, compassionate and responsible citizens.
Together, our taught curriculum, enrichment programme and wider opportunities provide children with the knowledge, experiences and personal qualities they will need for their next steps and for the opportunities and challenges of the future. Ultimately, we want every child to leave Longwick with a love of learning, a curiosity about the world and the confidence and aspiration to Grow, Flourish and Fly.
Curriculum Implementation
Learning is carefully sequenced from Reception to Year 6 so that children build secure knowledge, vocabulary and skills over time with regular opportunities for children to retrieve, revisit and apply prior learning.
Our curriculum is deliberately thematic, enabling children to make meaningful connections between their learning while maintaining the integrity and progression of individual subjects. Themes are built around high-quality class texts and, where appropriate, follow the chronological sequence of our history curriculum, providing a rich context through which learning across subjects can be connected. Substantive and disciplinary knowledge is carefully mapped in every subject, ensuring that the children build on what they already know and develop their understanding and skills progressively over time.
Our curriculum is structured through:
- a whole-school curriculum overview, ensuring breadth, balance, progression and appropriate sequencing from Reception to Year 6;
- year-group annual overviews, showing the sequence of themes, subjects and key learning across the year;
- termly thematic maps, demonstrating purposeful connections between subjects and the class text while maintaining subject-specific learning;
- knowledge organisers, identifying the essential knowledge, vocabulary and concepts that children should know and remember and supporting retrieval and connections with prior learning.
A distinctive feature of our curriculum is our focus on the world and our responsibility within it. During the Spring Term, themes across the school deliberately explore different aspects of our planet, enabling the children to investigate its environments, climates, landscapes and natural processes, alongside some of the challenges facing the world today. Through all curriculum areas, they are encouraged to question, investigate and consider their own relationship within the natural world.
Through our curriculum, learning is brought to life through theme days, trips, outdoor learning and our 'Enrichment Programme', helping children make meaningful connections between their learning and the wider world. These opportunities are an important part of their personal development, enabling them to discover new interests and talents and develop confidence, independence, resilience and the ability to work positively with others.
Opportunities for safeguarding and spiritual development are woven throughout the curriculum and deliberately identified within curriculum planning, including through our carefully selected class texts. With our children at heart, we adapt teaching and support to remove barriers, ensuring all children can access, participate in and succeed in our curriculum. We recognise individual starting points, strengths and needs so that every child feels valued. There is a strong emphasis on oracy and experiential learning throughout the curriculum with frequent opportunities to discuss, question, explain, debate and articulate their thinking.
Curriculum Impact
The impact of our curriculum is seen in our children know, remember, understand and can do.
They become confident and articulate communicators who can explain their thinking, ask questions, listen to different viewpoints and express their ideas clearly. They develop curiosity, independence, creativity and resilience and are increasingly able to apply their learning in different contexts.
Through assessment, pupil voice, work scrutiny and curriculum monitoring, teachers and leaders evaluate how well pupils are learning the intended curriculum. This enables us to identify strengths, address gaps and ensure that all pupils, including those with SEND and those who are disadvantaged or vulnerable, are supported and challenged to achieve well.
Through enrichment, outdoor and experiential learning and opportunities for spiritual and personal development, the children broaden their horizons, discover interests and talents and develop confidence in themselves and their abilities. They learn to respect and understand others, appreciate the world around them and recognise their responsibility towards their community and the environment.
By the end of Year 6, our children leave Longwick as knowledgeable, curious, articulate and outward-looking young people, with high aspirations and the knowledge, skills and personal qualities they need for the next stage of their education in an ever-changing world.