We have worked hard as a staff to personalise our curriculum so that it meets the needs of the children here at Oakmeadow. Personalised learning to us is about understanding and knowing our children, their needs and interests and then tailoring our provision to these to ensure that every pupil has an intrinsic desire to achieve and reach their star potential. We have therefore developed a curriculum around 5 drivers of Resilience, Culture, Diversity, Community and Environment. Furthermore, we strongly believe that the curriculum is a never-ending story, as there will always be something that we want to refine, ditch or add depth to. Our staff believe in the idea that curriculum work is a living, breathing process.
As a school, we place personal, social, spiritual, cultural, mental and physical development at the heart of our curriculum, with all other learning stemming from this foundation. We prioritise children’s wellbeing and their ability to navigate life and learning as they grow. Our curriculum provides pupils with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about their health, relationships and wellbeing. Relationship and Sex Education is woven into our teaching, alongside opportunities to explore life in modern Britain and the values of positive, active citizenship.
We offer rich discussions and experiences that help children understand the wider world, appreciate diversity, value different cultures, and develop resilience and adaptability. Challenge is built into all lessons, and children are encouraged to see mistakes as valuable learning opportunities. Our curriculum nurtures reflective learners who consider not only what they have learned, but how they learned it, and the skills they used. It also develops active learners who collaborate, problem-solve and think creatively.
Wherever possible, learning is rooted in our local area and community. A wide range of extra-curricular opportunities enables children to explore their talents and interests beyond the classroom.
Our curriculum is intentionally a knowledge rich curriculum, as we believe children need substantive and disciplinary knowledge to be able to understand, remember and apply their learning. The curriculum promotes long-term learning, and we believe that progress means knowing more and remembering more. As pupils learn the content of the curriculum, they are making progress. We have developed a curriculum built on current research regarding how memory works to ensure that children not only have access to ‘the best that has been thought and said’ but are taught this in a way that ensures children can remember the curriculum content in future years.
The curriculum is designed and organised in discrete subject pathways so that each subject’s substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge are placed at the heart of the curriculum. The subject pathways create the conditions for pupils to learn the concepts that come up again and again – the unifying ideas of each discipline. Then we look across subjects to make meaningful connections, as we understand that knowledge pays off when it is conceptual and when the facts are related to one another. We deliver this curriculum through topics which have been carefully selected by staff because we feel that they will interest and excite the children, and that the concepts within them will benefit and be of relevance to the children here.
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