Intent

At Whitmore Park children will experience a rich, broad and balanced curriculum designed to provide them with the knowledge, skills and cultural capital that they need to succeed in life. Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and high quality texts are used to drive the learning, alongside an emphasis on reading for pleasure. We enhance the National Curriculum by ensuring that it relates to our locality and the heritage of our pupils. In addition, we enrich learning, and provide children with cultural capital, through providing opportunities, visits, visitors and experiences that build on real-life learning. Our wider curriculum will promote inclusion, celebrate diversity and have an emphasis on personal, social development, mental and physical well-being. By the time children leave Whitmore Park they will be confident, independent well rounded learners who are prepared for the next stage of their education. The Curriculum is underpinned by the school’s Golden Values (Honesty, Kindness, Respect, Community and Growth) and British Values

Staff identified drivers support the needs of our learners and help us deliver our intent and these drivers are threaded throughout the curriculum:

  • Vocabulary
  • First-hand experiences
  • Diversity
  • Oracy
  • Inclusion
  • Well-being

Implementation

The curriculum is organised into discrete subjects with meaningful cross-curricular links to strengthen connections. There are opportunities to apply reading, writing and mathematics skills in other subjects. Each year, we have two whole school cross-curricular themed curriculum weeks to develop the Arts and Creativity. In the recent past, these have included an Arts week with the theme of ‘Environment and Recycling’, Coventry City of Culture celebration film festival event with the theme of Coventry’s transport heritage shared through the Arts and digital media, ‘The Lost Words’ with a focus on art, poetry and performance.  Throughout the year, we plan whole school specialist curriculum days such as Author Days, World Book Day, Science Day, Maths Day and International Day to provide children with inspirational experiences. Each History or Geography topic is introduced with a ‘Wow’ morning to inspire the children using story-telling, drama, resources, recap prior knowledge and share the learning journey. Specialist teachers who teach our Art, PE, Design + Technology, Computing and MFL have excellent subject knowledge and teaching skills to provide high quality teaching and learning for our pupils in these subjects. A range of after school clubs are offered to broaden children’s experiences.

High quality texts are at the heart of the curriculum and children are exposed to a wide, varied and diverse diet of texts across the life of the school. Reading supports writing and a high quality text is used as a stimulus for writing opportunities to enable children to learn and apply writing skills in context. We have a vocabulary spine across the school for all subjects and vocabulary is taught systematically. Oracy and the development of speaking is a priority: we use talk partners to share ideas and orally rehearse sentences, children are encouraged to speak in sentences and we are developing this area further.

To ensure that pupils develop secure knowledge, skills and understanding that they can build on, each subject is organised into a progression model that outlines the sticky knowledge, skills and vocabulary to be taught in a sequentially coherent way in each year group. Assessment of these skills takes place throughout, and includes reviews and a formal assessment at the end of each unit, allowing teachers, subject leaders and SLT to ensure that progression is clear and effective. All aspects of the curriculum are carefully mapped out to ensure that pupils build on secure prior knowledge, so that they can make meaningful connections within and across subjects. Clearly defined learning objectives and success criteria are implemented through the delivery of high-quality lessons, assessment for learning strategies are used to adjust the flow of the lesson. Opportunities for children to revisit knowledge such as quizzes and recall are planned into the teaching sequence

See our Teaching and Learning Policy for more detail.

Impact

The impact of our curriculum is shown in several ways. In core subjects, impact is shown through the progress and attainment outcomes in termly assessments and national testing. In addition, pupil voice and the quality of work in pupils’ book demonstrates the deeper impact on pupils knowing more and remembering more. In the wider curriculum, teachers assess the ‘sticky knowledge’ at the end of each unit through quizzes, posters or mindmaps. Skills are assessed during lessons and recorded on our tracker grids, pupil voice is used to show that pupils are confident and able to talk about what they have learnt using subject specific vocabulary. The impact of our personal development is shown in pupil surveys, pupil voice, the behaviour and attitude to learning of children observed in lessons and around the school and will show they have good social skills are respectful and tolerant of others, are confident, aspirational and inspired learners with good self-esteem.

Parents want their children to leave with:

Values and experiences children want to have Whitmore Park Primary School:

Our Whitmore Park Charter

At Whitmore Park Primary School, we believe that our pupils should experience a wide range of opportunities whilst at our school.
In consultation with staff and children, these are the top 15 experiences we will give our children.

  1. A visit to a theatre
  2. A visit to a place of national importance (eg. London houses of Parliament)
  3. A Forest school or woodland experience
  4. Attend a disco
  5. A visit to the Natural History Museum.
  6. A trip to the beach – Bosworth Water Park
  7. Experience a residential trip (Y4 camp, Y5 PGL, Y6 Dol-y-Moch)
  8. Go to a pantomime. KS1 panto in school
  9. Experience and take part in live music.
  10. Visit religious buildings. RE curriculum
  11. Think Tank Museum.
  12. Lion King KS2
  13. Visit a library. All years
  14. Rock Climbing
  15. An experience with animals

Our Curriculum

Extra-Curricular Opportunities

Our pupils are offered a large range of extra-curricular activities including: Sport, Dance, Art, Music, Computing and Gym. We aim to achieve excellence in our sporting activities entering many sport competitions and tournaments. Our specialist PE teachers deliver the PE curriculum in school and a wide range of after school and Saturday morning clubs for example: athletics, rugby, football, netball, dodgeball and cricket. Follow this link to see our sports pages.

Skills Academy

All of our children have the opportunity to attend skills academy on Friday afternoons. Our Skills Academy clubs take place for 35 minutes during the school day on Friday afternoons. Children choose three different clubs they would like to attend each year. Throughout the year children have the opportunity to attend each of their chosen clubs. At each club, the children will learn new skills and build on existing skills through fun and innovative activities.

The clubs fall into three categories:

  1. Physical development
  2. Creative development
  3. Academic development

Skills Academy provides children with the opportunity to enhance skills and talents they have (or don’t know they have yet!). The children at Whitmore Park greatly enjoy enhancing their skills in clubs such as: Art, Chess, Origami, Cricket, Basketball, Singing, Gardening, Punjabi, Enterprise, School Newspaper and many more.

Social skills and emotional well-being underpins all of the Skills Academy clubs. In line with our school values, clubs provide opportunities for the children to take responsibility for their own learning, help them to build resilience through challenging activities and learn to respect each other through team work and group activities.

Children earn their time in Skills Academy by demonstrating the school’s golden values and rules consistently. As well as developing physical, creative and academic skills, Skills Academy empowers pupils to decide which skills they would like to develop; to deepen a sense of community by working alongside pupils from other class and year groups and understanding positive behaviour is recognised by adults in school.

In a recent school council survey, over 95% of pupils said they greatly enjoyed attending their clubs! Pupils have suggested new clubs they would like to attend in the Spring and Summer terms.

Please click here to see a full copy of our curriculum statement.

The National Curriculum

Gov.UK web page: The national curriculum for England to be taught in all local-authority-maintained schools