Our curriculum

Our Curriculum Offer
Curriculum — Intent
We offer a broad, balanced and rich curriculum alongside opportunities to INSPIRE a love of learning, to promote lifelong learning and a sense of belonging. We ASPIRE for our children to make a positive difference in our school, our local and wider community. We want our children to ACHIEVE their potential by learning to learn.

Our foundations for our curriculum at Wrenbury Primary School is our belief that our school is a special place, where our staff, governors, parents and children can work closely together to inspire each other and aspire for all to have high expectations, the desire to succeed and the opportunity to achieve their full potential. We strive for our school to be a place where everyone has a sense of self, a sense of place and a sense of belonging both within our rural community and the wider world; where everyone in our school family is valued for their uniqueness and individuality because 'we all matter'.

Wellbeing
First and foremost, we understand that children need to feel happy and safe to access their learning. We also understand that our staff's wellbeing is important to ensure that they can be the best that they can be. Through the hidden curriculum and through our relationships, children are taught how to support their own well-being and manage their emotions effectively. Through our broad and rich curriculum offer, our children know what strengths they have and know how to face challenges that they may be faced with. Our curriculum explicitly teaches children to how to stay safe (including online).

Quality Texts
Reading has a high priority and underpins our curriculum at Wrenbury. Our Learning is led through a high-quality text, supplemented with lots of other quality literature, including non-fiction and poetry. These ambitious, quality texts come from the past and the present, from near and far and from other cultures. Children learn to read but are also encouraged to love to read at Wrenbury. They share and recommend books. Children become writers at Wrenbury because of the quality literacy led approach and an understanding that 'reading is breathing in; writing is breathing out'.

Rich Vocabulary
At Wrenbury, words matter — not only words in quality texts but in lesson content and in conversation. New vocabulary is introduced and explored with the children frequently. Subject specific vocabulary is taught to support children in learning more and remembering more.
Not only do words matter but talk matters. The skills needed by the children to communicate the curriculum and their learning are developed through quality interactions, questioning to support and develop their understanding and deepen their learning and by providing them with a range of opportunities for purposeful talk.

Support for learning
Children at Wrenbury are entitled to and receive quality first teaching. All children (including those with SEND) are provided with appropriate scaffolds and models in order to succeed independently. Carefully planned learning opportunities provide all children with the opportunity to achieve. We encourage children to learn in different ways. All children are prepared for the next stage of their learning journey and adult life by developing their independence and resilience.

Learning to learn — ACHIEVE
Children are taught to:
A Ask questions to support and deepen their learning
C Concentrate and challenge themselves
H Help each other
I Improve their work to make it even better
E Engage with their learning
V Value their work; make it the best it can be
E Explore; think more deeply

Key concepts
Our curriculum is knowledge rich, creates opportunities for children to apply skills and deepen their understanding of key concepts. The sequence of learning is carefully planned annually and built upon year on year. Making the learning relevant and connected is an essential part of supporting children in learning more and remembering more at Wrenbury.
Powerful knowledge
Children know more and remember more through our curriculum. Opportunities for children to deepen their learning are carefully planned to provide the children with powerful knowledge. Educational visits and involvement in community events are integrated into our curriculum to enrich and enhance the children's learning. Learning Journeys and class books enable children to reflect on their learning and confidently share their learning with others. The children's learning and achievements (in and out of school) are celebrated across school and all subjects.

Curriculum — Implementation

Each academic year, different sized year groups bring a change to the organisation of the class structure across school, where mixed-aged teaching is more often the norm. Consequently, great care, thought and reflection has to be under-taken in mapping our curriculum and the learning landscape, year-by-year, year-on-year for our children at Wrenbury.

At the end of each academic year, and in preparation for the next, an annual review of each year group's coverage (against the National Curriculum) alongside our yearly subject reviews is undertaken. We evaluate each cohort's Learning Journey overview from the previous academic year.

Collaboratively, we track the progress through the national curriculum for each of our year groups and plan the next stage (year) of their learning journey, building on the children's prior learning, knowledge and understanding, where content allows or introducing the children to new learning.

Each base (class) follows a termly 'Learning Journey', through a whole school theme. Despite the broad title given to each term's theme, there is careful thought and rigorous planning to underpin and ensure that the children are developing and deepening their knowledge, skills and understanding as they progress through the primary years.

Our curriculum and learning for children at Wrenbury focus on two questions:
Why does this matter? What does this mean to me?

We consider and plan how the main areas of learning can be linked together under termly, collective, overarching, whole school themes that are then appropriated to the different cohorts, ensuring the curriculum is bespoke to our school's context.

Learning is led through a high-quality text, supplemented with lots of other quality literature including non-fiction and poetry. Individual subject content and knowledge (core learning) is woven and interleaved through these themes to create the rich narrative that underpins the learning landscape unique to Wrenbury.

John Muir, famously said: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe". At Wrenbury, there is an understanding that there are elements from different subjects that are often needed to be pulled together when acquiring new knowledge and understanding. The curriculum provides opportunities for deeper learning and we believe that cross curricula learning provides a deeper context in which discrete subjects can be taught and understood for children to know more, remember more.

Our curriculum introduces the children to key figures who offer inspiration (past and present) and encourage the children to be ambitious and aspirational.

Curriculum — Impact
Learning is regularly monitored to provide feedback to learners and to address any misconceptions. Teachers then plan appropriate challenge in future lessons building on new knowledge acquired and retained to ensure that children learn more and remember more. Formative assessment, used daily, helps children to know their strengths as well as gaps in learning. Teachers use a range of formative assessment strategies that include quizzes and summary tasks and the use of information technology. Summative assessment may occur at the end of a unit of work, during assessment weeks each term or at the end of the key stage.

The impact of our curriculum is evidenced in the beautiful work displayed around school and in the children's individual Learning Journey books.

Children leave Wrenbury engaged in learning and ready for the next stage of their learning journey as they transition to high school. Beyond the subject learning, we are proud that our children are well-rounded pupils who have a strong sense of self; recognise themselves as having a place in their community and the world; think about their own needs and the needs of others and above all know that 'we all matter'.