The Curriculum

Curriculum Intent

At Waltham Holy Cross Primary Academy, we passionately believe that all children deserve access to an education that will provide them with life-fulfilling opportunities and the freedom to make choices about their future. Our curriculum is designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills they need at each stage of their educational journey, while upholding and promoting our core school values.

By focusing on three intrinsically linked key drivers: academic success, physical development and positive wellbeing, we provide children with the opportunity to thrive in fundamental areas, preparing them to be not only 'next stage ready' but also 'life ready as global citizens.'

Through a carefully sequenced core curriculum, alongside an inspiring wider curriculum, children at Net Academies Trust will leave with:

The confidence and skills to express themselves effectively
Fluent reading skills, combined with a passion for reading, supporting them in understanding and interpreting the world
An acceptance and appreciation of others' differences
Tools and strategies to ensure positive wellbeing and happiness
The capacity for metacognitive thinking and self-regulation, enabling them to take control of their learning
Character defining and memorable childhood experiences that foster the development of cultural capital

Curriculum Implementation

Our curriculum is built upon the foundations of the National Curriculum, with subjects carefully planned and sequenced to outline the key knowledge and subject-specific skills children must master at each stage. For some subjects, the trust has developed its own sequential and progressive curriculum, ensuring the local context is reflected. In other subjects, external schemes of work have been adopted and tailored to meet the needs of our children.

Each unit includes essential learning questions for children to explore, alongside key subject skills that are developed progressively from the Early Years to Year 6. This approach fosters the growth of key concepts and schemas, ensuring both knowledge and skills build over time.

Key vocabulary is explicitly highlighted and taught throughout all lessons, aligned with the trust’s teaching and learning policy. Additionally, the consistent use of high-quality texts across the curriculum maximises opportunities for reading and vocabulary development.

Wider Curriculum

We strongly believe it is essential that primary schools are proactive in their approaches towards wellbeing and this is at the heart of Waltham Holy Cross' wider curriculum. A structured, purposeful whole school approach and ethos helps to support pupils in developing lifelong positive wellbeing and can strengthen any additional support pupils may have for mental health and wellbeing.

It facilitates the development of positive wellbeing, whilst supporting an acknowledgement that physical development helps to enhance a healthy mindset. In turn, this enables the creation of a positive and proactive zone for wellbeing thus enabling those who are more vulnerable every chance to grow more resilient and positive in mindset.

Curriculum Impact

The aim of our curriculum is to ensure high achievement and success for all pupils, regardless of their backgrounds or starting points. Pupils' success is reflected through various outcomes across our curriculum drivers - academic success, physical development and positive wellbeing:

Children are motivated to learn and establish positive attitudes, preparing them for a successful future
Disadvantaged children are provided with opportunities and experiences to achieve as well as their peers
Children with SEND thrive both academically and personally, as a result of an inclusive curriculum, focusing on the individual needs of each child
Children are ready for secondary school, equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills
Children are happy and demonstrate a range of tools to regulate emotions
Children understand and value the importance of being physically healthy

Academic Success

A range of effective formative and summative assessment strategies demonstrate that knowledge and subject specific skills are learnt and retained as children move through their primary education. We understand that ‘The aim of all instruction is to alter long-term memory. If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned.’ (Kirschner, Sweller and Clarke, 2006). Retrieval opportunities and practice across the curriculum are fundamental to our assessment approach, enabling children to retain and link key knowledge in order to develop concepts and schemas

Physical Development

Children at Waltham Holy Cross understand the importance of being physically healthy. A huge importance is placed on health and wellbeing and the school has developed a range of approaches to ensure children are physically healthy. Children at Waltham Holy Cross take part in the Daily Mile, giving them an additional opportunity to exercise, increasing physical fitness over time. Children are also encouraged to take part in a variety of competitive sports, which they do so with determination, resilience and perseverance.

Positive Wellbeing

Children at Waltham Holy Cross are happy. They have a love for learning and show a great enthusiasm for subjects across the curriculum. The wider curriculum provides children with a range of tools they can use to regulate their emotions (e.g. the use of Zones of regulation) and they have a huge network around them if they need to seek support and advice. Our partnership with Place2Be provides invaluable support. The service is accessed by a high number of our children and has an extremely positive impact on their wellbeing.

Children at Waltham Holy Cross demonstrate the school’s values, outlined by our animated influential characters that children can relate to.

They are:

Respect
Responsibility
Fairness
Equality
Honesty
Resilience
Kindness

Pupils make the right choices for their safety, including their safety online, and these choices benefit the school and the wider community.

How do we teach our curriculum?

Our teaching and learning policy highlights our consistent pedagogical approach across all subjects:

Key teaching intentions:

Teachers have secure subject knowledge
Prior knowledge is explored, recapped and built upon
Retrieval opportunities are provided across all subjects
Knowledge and skills are progressive
Learning questions and steps to being successful are made explicit
Oracy is built into all lessons
Vocabulary is explicitly taught in all lessons, focusing on tier 2 and tier 3 words
A range of formative assessment strategies are used
Scaffolded planned activities ensure expectations remain high and all learners can be successful
Metacognitive skills are developed and promoted across all areas of learning