Randwick Church of England Primary SchoolOur Curriculum
We have always ensured that the children at Randwick are taught a full curriculum, and as a state school we follow the national curriculum: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-primary-curriculum
Our curriculum is ever-evolving so that it embraces the latest educational thinking and offers something unique to the children at Randwick School. You can find out more by looking at the curriculum maps below, our current Knowledge Organisers and the attached presentation, shared with parents at a curriculum presentation in school in March 2022.
We focus on a geography, history or art topic for one afternoon each term. This enabes us to plan our curriculum to ensure the children can make strong connections to prior learning in these subject areas. We revisit knowledge and skills in a systematic way that ensures the children remember their previous learning and make connections with current topics. The children also have weekly science, computing, D&T, Religious Education, music, PHSE and Philosophy for Children, plus PE which is currently delivered by our sports coaches.
Our intent is to make the curriculum relevant to the children here at Randwick. History and geography topics are rooted in the local area; our history curriculum features our local Iron Age long barrow, the village contribution to the woollen industry, and the life of an evacuee in Stroud during World War Two. Our geography curriculum includes opportunities for fieldwork in the woods, hills and rivers nearby, while making links to global geography.
Our curriculum is also experiential; we want children to see, hear, smell and feel what they are learning about so that they have a sense of place, time, community. Children have told us that they learn best, and write best, as a result of experiencing something. So it’s important that they experience learning outside of the classroom, including visits to the Stroud Book and Cheltenham Science Festivals, or to the mosque in Gloucester to learn about Islamism, or to our onsite Forest School to learn about our flora and fauna and embrace our wonderful outdoors.
Our curriculum is global and culturally rich and teaches children about our local area, our country, our world and the cultural diversity within all of these, so that they are excited by the world around them and ready to be global citizens. We do this through celebrating religious festivals around the world, through a rich and diverse curriculum covering everything from Rosa Park's impact on the world to life in a big city, to linking with schools in Kenya and Gloucester.
We want our children to be able to communicate effectively, and we support them to be independent learners through investigating key questions in their topics each week, and through discussions in Philosophy for Children lessons. Each topic has an end goal (a product), and children work together to decide how best to communicate what they have learnt, often through writing and presentations. There is a purpose for learning.
French teaching in Key Stage Two is interwoven throughout the week (eg learning phrases during afternoon registration). All children get an average of around two hours of Physical Education a week (which includes twice weekly daily mile or skip to be fit sessions, Sports Week and termly inter house sports competitions). Children have a class story read to them daily and have regular opportunities to read themselves, and to an adult if younger. Volunteers and parent helpers enable us to enhance these opportunities to read to an adult so please let us know if you have some time available; see ‘Reading at Randwick’ for more. Our curriculum in inclusive and adapted to suit the needs of individual children as appropriate.
The curriculum maps show what we teach when. We use some schemes to help us with music (Charanga) and PHSE (SCARF) . We have bought the ‘PE Pal’ scheme from Atlas Sports; each class has a tablet with PE Pal loaded which provides plans and videos for teachers and children.
Knowledge Organisers focus on the main topic and go home to parents and carers at the start of term. Teachers work together to map out the key knowledge and skills within each topic, planning in experiences and visits to enhance the children's learning and the big questions to answer throughout the unit of work. By sharing these with the children throughout the topic we draw on the links between new knowledge and concepts while reinforcing previous learning. This helps them learn and remember key information. If you are interested in reading more about these, follow this link:
https://primaryknowledgeorganisers.wordpress.com/about/