West Pennard CofE Primary School

At West Pennard C of E VC Primary School we have tailored our curriculum to instil enthusiasm and a love of learning, to ensure achievement and progress for all and to support pupil wellbeing and happiness at every opportunity.

We deliver inspiring, first hand learning experiences across the curriculum that enable all children to develop a thirst for knowledge whilst also building resilience and promoting self-confidence. Our curriculum drivers create opportunities for children to apply their learning in a variety of exciting, educational contexts as well as allowing them to pursue their own interests and express their own knowledge and skills to each new learning journey.

Our inclusive character values the relationships between the school, parents and the community in which each child is safe and treated as an individual. We encourage children to demonstrate curiosity, creativity and independence; to collaborate, take pride and aspire in their work. We encourage children to develop their Christian character by focusing on the key values of friendship, thankfulness, truthfulness, forgiveness, respect and compassion. Our motto ‘To Try is to Triumph’ is central to all that we do.

We celebrate our own unique school identity through the rich experiences that our curriculum and Enrichment Days provide. Our community is of great importance to us as well as our links with the Church and village. The closure of Pilton, North Wootton and West Bradley Schools in the 1960s and subsequent expansion of West Pennard School acted to expand the community that we serve and therefore our links with those villages, St John’s, St Peter’s and St Andrew's Churches.

Our curriculum builds on the EYFS and National Curriculum. This enables us to build strong relationships, celebrate differences, promote respect and build a sense of community. Parents / carers have a right to withdraw their child(ren) from all or part of the teaching of RE. Please contact Mr Wheat via the School Office to discuss this requirement if you wish to do this.

The aims of our school curriculum at West Pennard Church of England Primary School are to enable children to:

Feel safe and valued as part of a caring community that celebrates success
Be independent thinkers / learners who are able to seek solutions creatively and cooperatively
Develop curious minds and be confident to ask questions
Be courageous learners who are confident to take risks in their learning
Experience and actively participate in a relevant, enjoyable curriculum that evolves to meet the needs of all
Be aspirational learners and to achieve as fully and highly as possible
Have their needs met so that they can access the learning and teaching
Develop academically, spiritually, morally, socially, culturally and emotionally so that they can become global citizens that understand and respect diversity, representing British Values
Be polite and courteous
Try and triumph

To ensure that this happens we will:

Ensure our curriculum reflects our church school status and promotes our core values in all that we do.
Enable pupils to develop knowledge and vocabulary, understand concepts and acquire skills, and be able to choose and apply these in relevant situations
Support pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development
Support pupils’ physical development and responsibility for their own health, and enable them to be active
Promote a positive attitude towards learning
Ensure equal access to learning for all pupils, with high expectations for every pupil with appropriate levels of challenge and support
Equip pupils with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life
Extend learning beyond the classroom through parental engagement activities, home learning and a wide variety of extra-curricular activities.
Ensure our curriculum is filled with rich first-hand purposeful experiences, including a variety of trips, visitors and events
Recognise our children as learning partners and ensure our curriculum is flexible and responsive to needs and interests
Make use of our local area and wider community as well as links with our global partner schools

Curriculum Design, Organisation and Delivery

We organise our curriculum with overviews of every subject and for each year taught, which you will see below. When you click on these overviews they go into our google drive, where the documents are stored and updated accordingly. We use google slides within our lessons to map out what is taught in History, Geography, Science, RE and PSHE and these are accessible only in school as they work also as online showcase books with pictures of work and pupils which we understandably need to restrict access to. These slides are linked from our overviews and include the Medium Term Plans that map out the skills, vocabulary and knowledge to be taught and developed, as well as the lesson outlines, pupil outcomes and verbal response and assessment. An overview of the learning for the term is also shared with parents. An example of what this looks like and the thinking behind it is mapped out below. The term's Christian Value and Learning Behaviour focus is shared on the plans too in order to aid consistency between home and school. We have developed these documents and our curriculum ourselves in order to make the learning relevant for the children that we teach and our setting and circumstance.