Walter Halls Primary is a Nottingham City maintained school and follows the National Curriculum requirements.
It is important to us all that we make our curriculum our own and relevant to the community we serve so that our children connect with it and want to learn. We seek to sequence learning in a progressive way so that the experiences that our children have, from the moment they start with us until the moment they leave for secondary school, are meaningful, rich and enjoyable. Our intent is that that every child at Walter Halls feels success and finds out what kind of clever they are and that primary school gives them the skills they need to become life-long learners.
Our curriculum is always building and growing to enable us to be responsive to the children we teach and the context in which we work. For this reason, we focus our energies on two main ‘Curriculum drivers’ which help us to match our curriculum carefully to our children’s needs. These drivers are: POSSIBILITIES and COMMUNICATION. Every learning experience we plan should seek to demonstrate wider possibilities and aspiration to our children; giving the learning purpose and meaning that resonates with our children. We also work hard to ensure our children are able to communicate in a confident and sophisticated way: through the books they read and the vocabulary they gain and through a confidence that comes from performance and the arts.
Implementation:
Reading is central to every part of our curriculum. Every child should leave primary school knowing how to read and realising that reading opens other doors for their future success. We work hard to make sure this happens. Children connect a variety of quality texts to various areas of their learning and vocabulary acquisition takes high priority in all areas of the curriculum. We follow a robust phonics scheme – Read Write Inc – and invest heavily in ensuring that all adults are skilled in delivering this scheme with consistency and precision.
Our Values are explicitly taught and referred to regularly throughout a wide range of our curriculum areas. For example, in RSHE, in the books we choose, in other history, geography or RE topics we cover, we will seek to make these connections to ensure we are finding every opportunity to teach citizenship and foster all aspects of fundamental British Values in our children. Our PSHE & RSE curriculum is exceptionally important to us. We ensure every child has weekly explicit learning for personal, social, health, relationship education. This enhances their development in our school motto of ‘Be You Best’, nurturing their learning about why being a good human in society is so important. Termly ‘Values in the Community projects’ give our children a regular opportunity to apply this learning within their local community: visiting care homes, engaging in community projects, raising money for charities and living out our Walter Halls Values in the local area.
EYFS approaches to teaching and learning are important to us at Walter Halls and we continue to use these approaches into KS1 and beyond as we believe that they positively foster independence, curiosity and making valuable connections with many different areas of learning. Our Year 1 classes follow an EY approach, using ‘continuous provision’ in their daily timetables to ensure core learning is regularly revisited and to help with a successful transition into KS1. Our approaches to the planning and teaching of maths across school also aligns with this style, through ‘daily routines’ which are practised and revisited regularly every day. Outdoor learning connects well with our EYFS approaches to learning. Our children benefit from beautiful outdoor spaces which we ensure we utilise in as many different ways as possible. Our uniform is an ‘active-style’ one because we want our children to benefit from learning in nature, moving their bodies and being engaged in outdoor lessons every day.
Subject Focus Days take place on one Friday per half term. They seek to ‘hone in’ on core areas of the curriculum so that children have the time and space to immerse themselves in one subject area for the entire day. These days end with a tangible ‘product’ of their learning and add purpose to the knowledge and skills they cover over time. Everyone across school, from Nursery through to Y6, takes part in the same focus area and this unites the school community in the joy of learning together.
We invest in building effective teaching habits in all of the staff who teach here. ‘Rosenshine Principles in Action’, as an approach to effective teaching and learning strategies, is a key way we seek to implement our curriculum in every year group. By following these strands in our planning and teaching methods, we ensure knowledge ‘sticks’, is progressive and builds over time. We take a relational approach to our teaching and learning. We are trauma-informed and work exceptionally hard to build trusting and positive relationships with our children. Our rules and boundaries are simple and consistent and create safety and happiness#
Curriculum Review
We organise our curriculum into 4 areas, which allows individual subject leaders, as well as senior leaders, to monitor and review across a key priority area: Core Team (English, Maths, Science & Computing), Wellbeing (Sports, PHSE, RSE, SEND & EAL), Arts (Art, Music, Drama & D&T) and KUW (Knowledge & Understanding the World – RE, History, Geography and MfL). Click on each area to find out more about our curriculum.
If you have any questions regarding the curriculum we teach, please contact the school directly.