Upton Westlea Curriculum

The Curriculum at Upton Westlea.

Rationale

Alongside delivering the legal requirements of the National Curriculum (September 2014) our curriculum has been designed with the aim of teaching children at Upton Westlea about their local area for example, visits are organised to the local War Memorial, local churches, Chester Zoo, Grosvenor Museum, Upton library, Delamere Forest, Anglesey, the Roman City of Chester, Liverpool Football Club, local theatres etc.

We believe that children learn best from first hand experiences and when learning has a purpose. All topics are designed with an exciting, stimulating opener in order to ‘hook’ children into their learning. This might be in the form of a poem, a picture, a song, a piece of music, drama, a visit or visitors into school.

Recording

As writing is one of our key school improvement targets, this underpins many of our topics. Meaningful opportunities for children to write within the context of the topic provided as much as possible. In order to maintain high standards of writing throughout the curriculum teachers are identifying extended pieces of writing using colour coded stickers. The aim of this is to ensure that children understand that high standards in grammar, punctuation, spellings and sentence structure are important in all areas of writing, not just in the Literacy lesson.

Timetabling the Curriculum

At Upton Westlea we believe that children learn best when they are given real, first hand experiences. We therefore teach most of our History, Geography, Art and DT through a topic based curriculum. As much as possible we introduce each topic with a ‘WOW’ factor such as an inspiring visit, a workshop, visitors into school, a drama etc. We aim to incorporate other subjects such as Science, Maths and Music where relevant, but these are generally taught discretely. English is the ‘golden thread’ that underpins everything we do, so reading, writing, speaking and listening all play a vital role in our topics.

Trying to fit in all the National Curriculum subjects every week and all the extras is extremely challenging. Some subjects may not be taught each term. History for example, may lend itself more to visits planned in the Autumn (Year 4 – Chester) and Geography may fit in more with a residential visit in the Autumn term (Year 2).

Please see class long term plans for an in-depth overview of our curriculum for each year group (Long Term Plans).

Specialist Provision

We recognise the fact that with 12 subjects to cover and extra curricular activities it is not always possible for ‘all-round’ teachers to have the time, skills and knowledge to teach all subjects in depth. Therefore specialist teachers are employed to teach dedicated weekly lessons in PE (KS2) and Music (Year 5). Part of the Sports Premium funding is used for staff to shadow professional sports coaches in order to improve their own delivery of PE for the future.

In addition, we welcome experts in their field into school including authors such as Chris Kay (Hooba Looba) and Lee Benson to inspire children to write. Matt Oldfield the author of ‘Ultimate Football Heros’ has also recently worked with the children. The children also had the opportunity to work with disabled athletes and participate in ‘Wheelchair Athletics’.

Staff Development

With the introduction of the new National Curriculum in September 2014, teachers have been provided with specialist support to support them in their own professional development. School has invested in the support of a range of external education consultants to work alongside staff in order to help them develop and improve their own knowledge and skills in delivering the requirements of the new curriculum. Staff also attend external courses run by CWAC and neighbouring authorities, as well as independent companies.

Links with other schools

Regular opportunities are planned with schools within our EiP for children to experience a wider breadth and range of curriculum activities for example, children have attended challenge days at Upton High in Literacy and Maths, Science and PE. Able writers and mathematicians have attended sessions with authors (Colin R Parsons) and mathematician (Anne Fieldhouse) at Newton Primary School. Sporting events are arranged within the EiP and more recently a pupil speaking event at StoryHouse in Chester has been arranged with local schools (January 2020).

Subject Leadership and Management

Every teacher (except NQT’s) has a responsibility for leading and managing at least one curriculum subject with a link Governor:

Subject

Teacher

Governor

English – Phonics

Mrs L Wright

Mrs S Hodkinson

English – Reading

Mrs L Wright

Mrs S Hodkinson

English – Writing

Miss H Key

Mrs S Hodkinson

Maths

Mrs V Field

Mrs L Lowton

Science

Mr J Ellinson

TBC

R.E.

Mrs C Jones

TBC

Computing

Mrs F McCracken 

Mrs L McCluskey

Geography

Mrs E Clements

Mrs N Buckley

History

Mrs S Kelly

Mrs N Buckley

Art

Miss L Dalton

Mrs L Lowton

D.T.

Miss L Dalton

Mrs S Lowton

French

Mrs S Kelly

Mrs S Cocks

Music

Miss L Dalton / Mr J Moss

Mrs L McCluskey

P.E.

Mr A Newman

Mr B Crilley

SMSC & PSHE

Mrs C Jones

TBC