The national curriculum offers endless possibilities for children inside and outside the classroom. Therefore, the leadership team at Woodlands Park has carefully selected and designed the content to include in our curriculum so that our children experience a relevant, balanced and ambitious curriculum.

In each area of the curriculum, this learning is outlined in a curriculum map so that each subject can be taught discretely and progressively. Our curriculum map defines the core content (substantive knowledge) and how we teach the children subject specific skills (disciplinary knowledge).

Each half term, the children are immersed in a number of units of learning. These units are planned in outline by our senior leadership team and subject leaders and then are further developed by class teachers. This ensures that the core knowledge from our curriculum overviews is taught at the appropriate depth.

Teachers and leaders track prior and future learning of core objectives so that our curriculum is taught progressively and we can make connections from year group to year group. Teachers develop the objectives in the medium term plans into full lesson plans that are well matched to the learners in their classes. The implementation of the curriculum is monitored by school leaders through lesson observations, books scrutinies and pupil conferencing.

Medium Term Planning Principles: 

Enquiry Questions

All units are shaped from an enquiry questions. The questions give meaning to the curriculum content and supports pupils to engage with that content with disciplinary rigour. 

Vocabulary Development

The understanding and acquisition of subject specific vocabulary is set out by the subject leader on the medium term planning document. This vocabulary is taught and revisited during the sequence of lessons. The understanding and acquisition of vocabulary for all children, especially children with SEND, is supported by class displays, word banks and other strategies (e.g. pre-teaching). 

Components and Composites

Core knowledge outlined in the curriculum map is taught during the unit of work as stated in the curriculum map or broken down into smaller, clearer objectives. These objectives are the component learning objectives for a learning sequence. These objectives are connected by a composite objective. The aim of the composite objective is to provide an over-arching objective, usually linked to the enquiry question for a unit of work.

Discrete History Teaching Sequences

To ensure that the National Curriculum is taught progressively, the history curriculum is taught as discrete units of learning. This ensures that the objectives in the national curriculum are taught in depth, spiral effectively and progressively and that core learning is embedded in the long term memory.  

An example: Geography Medium Term Plan & Geography Curriculum Map.

Hyperlinks below to Curriculum Half Termly Overviews: