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, local theatres etc.

We believe that children learn best from first hand experiences and when learning has a purpose. All topics are designed to engage the children and inspire them to enjoy learning different topics. We plan engaging experiences to enhance the children's learning such as trips, visitors and the use of artefacts in the classroom.

Recording

As writing is one of our key school priorities, 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 opportunities to write with purpose. The aim of this is to ensure children write in a range of contexts and subjects applying their writing skills.

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. 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 Foundation Subjects.

Please see class long term plans for an in-depth overview of our curriculum for each year group (Long Term Plans) and our subject pages on the school website. 

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.

Staff Development

Staff work hard to continue to develop their CPD both within their teaching, subject leader roles and professional development. Opportunities are planned for staff to work closely with outside agencies such as the English Hub for Phonics and Early Reading, the Maths Hub and Maths No Problem trainers. We work with other schools and companies such The Literacy Company to carry out termly moderation for Writing to share good practice and moderate the writing across the school. 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.

Subject Leadership and Management

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

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