Our Curriculum Offer
At Braithwaite CE Primary School, we believe in the concept of lifelong learning for both adults and children. We maintain that learning should be a rewarding and enjoyable experience for everyone; it should be fun and challenging. As a group of leaders and educators, we know what we are offering and why. We have carefully mapped out the key concepts, knowledge and skills that we expect the children to acquire at each stage of their learning, from EYFS to Year 6, in each subject in its own right. This careful sequencing allows the children’s initial, shallow understanding of a concept to be built upon and deepened, year on year, thereby ensuring we are Learning Together, Growing Together. This knowledge acquisition is ambitious and wide-ranging: we believe that it is our moral purpose as educators to ensure that every child has access to this rich knowledge of the world around them, both past and present, so that they can apply it in their futures.
Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural (SMSC) development, as well as the promotion of British Values (Democracy, Rule of Law, Respect and Tolerance, Individual Liberty), are woven through our curriculum as well as being a focus of Collective Worship and wider school activities and experiences. With our School Values embedded throughout all aspects of school life, the curriculum ensures that physical development, well-being and mental health are key elements that support the development of the whole child and promote a positive attitude to learning. We have high expectations of all children, including those with SEND, and seek to identify barriers to learning, through careful assessment, and then to remove these barriers so that all children can access a broad and balanced curriculum. Further detail is outlined in our SEND Policy
Our approach to our curriculum and pedagogy is research-led which gives us confidence that our curriculum offer and implementation is effective.
As a school we use Read Write Inc for our phonics and handwriting, White Rose Maths for our maths curriculum and CUSP for English, reading, science, history, geography and music. Other subjects have bespoke curriculum plans which take the best practice of the other schemes we follow and are adapted to meet the needs of our mixed-age classes. We are also proud to include Alfresco Learning sessions into our curriculum offer, providing well planned and sequenced lessons which support our staff to take learning outdoors and still meet the national expectations.
‘The purpose of curriculum is to build up the content of long-term memory so that when students are asked to think, they are able to think in more powerful ways.’ (D. William, 2018)
‘A student with deep knowledge not only knows more but can see the links between what they know and how new learning connects to prior learning. In other words, they do not just understand part of something; they understand the whole.’ (D. Willingham, 2018)
The following documents map out our whole school curriculum, which is on a 2 year cycle for KS1 and a 2 and 4 year cycle for KS2 depending on the subject. These documents show the overview of what will be taught when and are underpinned by more detailed whole-school termly planning, subject-specific medium term planning and weekly planning. If, having read our curriculum pages and documents, you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email admin@braithwaite.cumbria.sch.uk and your message will be passed on to the relevant person who can help.
