The Whitehouse Curriculum has been carefully put together to provide the best possible educational outcomes and inclusive experiences for all of our children and families. Whitehouse Community Primary has a high proportion of children with English as an additional language (35%). In our school community, there are over 24 different languages spoken by children, their families and our staff. As well as this, 15% of our children are on the SEND register. To meet the broad and challenging needs of our pupils, our spiral curriculum allows children to develop knowledge and skills progressively, building up their vocabulary and understanding as they progress through the year groups. Our inclusive and thorough approach to differentiation and scaffolding of learning is designed to allow every child in our school to feel included and achieve success in all lessons. This in turn boosts their confidence, improves their learning attitudes and ultimately closes the gap by raising their attainment.

Intent

Following careful research and a thorough awareness of the needs of our children, the Whitehouse Curriculum has been designed to promote exciting and creative learning experiences, accessible to all, which foster independence and encourage a fascination for learning. Our inclusive curriculum follows a spiral approach where skills are built on and revisited year on year.  The curriculum content is taught through a themed approach, based on carefully chosen key enquiry questions. It is our intention that all learning is inter-connected and focused on this key question, offering a creative way to develop pupil’s knowledge, skills, understanding and vocabulary. This approach allows for boundless learning opportunities; it encourages our children to research, investigate and problem solve and motivates them to take ownership of their own learning journey. We do not put a ceiling on what pupils can achieve and we do not hold pre-conceptions about any pupils’ ability to make progress, we encourage them to thrive and achieve their full potential from their varied starting points. We understand the key role parents and carers play in supporting their children’s learning, and so we want to encourage a home-school partnership which enables parents and carers to understand how to enhance the skills being taught in school and celebrate in their child’s achievements.

Implementation

Here at Whitehouse Community Primary, we implement our curriculum using a themed approach based on carefully chosen enquiry questions. The Whitehouse Curriculum content has been converted into a comprehensive set of age-related targets in each curriculum subject for each year group. These detailed, bespoke targets have been carefully selected with input from all teachers and curriculum subject leaders to suit the needs of our children and ensure progression in both skills and knowledge from EYFS up to year 6 for all children. Teachers use these targets to plan cross-curricular lessons and learning opportunities for our children based around an enquiry question for each half-term’s theme. Geography, History, Art, Design Technology and Music (where possible) are linked to these question themes to help reduce the cognitive load for our learners. Learning in these lessons is also directly linked to the English Reading and Writing units for that half term, enabling children to continually consolidate and apply their understanding and develop a deeper understanding of subject specific vocabulary.

Our curriculum meets the requirements of the National Curriculum and incorporates a variety of teaching and learning styles including:

• High quality whole class teaching
• Three step scaffolded lesson objectives and gold challenge extension activities
• A balance of independent work as well as collaborative work including pairs and small group work
• A variety of written and practical activities including visual, auditory and tactile elements
• Opportunities for investigation, experimentation, listening, observing, talking and discussing
• Well-organised learning environments with easily-accessible, relevant and high-quality resources to support learning
• Vibrant stimulus displays to ‘ hook’ children’s interest in their enquiry questions
• Parental engagement opportunities and enquiry theme related homework tasks
• Enrichment activities, visitors, trips and focus days to promote key areas of learning

In addition to content targets, all lessons in our school are planned and taught to promote our core learning behaviours known as, 'The Whitehouse Way’. These are the values of courage, perseverance, responsibility and reflection; they are embedded in all areas of our curriculum and complement our PSHE, RRSA, SMSC and British Values education.

Impact

Due to our inclusive approach, all children at Whitehouse are able to take ownership of their learning and become engaged, independent and motivated life-long learners. In turn, this has a positive effect on our children’s academic success, their learning behaviours and their future aspirations. The cross-curricular learning opportunities at our school not only provide the information, skills and attitudes necessary for our pupils to thrive in education but also the confidence and ability to succeed in and contribute positively to Modern British Society both now and in their adult lives.

Our curriculum impact is regularly and rigorously monitored through termly pupil progress meetings and data analysis. Our curriculum content and teaching approaches are evaluated and reviewed annually taking into account the enjoyment and engagement of our children, the academic successes and progress made and the safeguarding needs of our school.  

To find out more about the exciting curriculum at Whitehouse Community Primary, please see the separate curriculum statements where our subject co-ordinators have shared their aims and vision or visit our overview pages which show what our children learn each year.