Our whole school theme changes throughout the year. These whole school themes are open-ended, as child-led as possible and provide our staff and children with the opportunity to explore and build an exciting curriculum journey around an ‘invitation’, ‘provocation’ or ‘hook’. This promotes investigation and exploration but also gives the children some ownership around what they want to learn alongside what must be taught from the national curriculum and early years framework. A whole class question has been created for every class under every theme, it is the children and teachers job to be able to answer this question based on the research, direct teaching and investigating that has taken place in the classroom and at home. We combine direct teaching with independent research, to ensure the children find the answer to their question, whilst encouraging them to explore and wonder.
As stated in our curriculum document, teaching will build on previous learning to deepen children’s knowledge, skills and understanding, through a range of activities, allowing them to become capable and confident learners. Whilst we deliver our curriculum through a whole school ‘themed’ approach. We value and plan for each subject using subject specific overviews which we link within our theme (this could maybe link to the subjects page?). Our Curriculum Teams develop, monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of their subject across the whole school.