Curriculum Overview

 We have an extraordinary family here at Broadwater Down Primary School. Our community of children, staff, parents and governors is unique to us, and so is the curriculum content that we deliver every day.

Our learners deserve a supportive, forward thinking, curriculum of recovery that enables them to feel safe and happy. We want our children to feel ready for their learning and for life beyond primary school and we will ensure that we work together so that they understand and enjoy being a respectful global citizen.

Our curriculum is driven by these underlying principles:

• Happiness and wellbeing;
• Understanding the healing process involving the loss of routine, friendships, structure, opportunity and freedom post pandemic;
• Instilling and nurturing positive character traits;
• Social and cultural capital;
• Addressing and closing the gaps in learning, especially for our most vulnerable learners;
• Progression of knowledge and skills through and beyond the National Curriculum.

All subjects within the curriculum can be divided into two categories. 

Our core subjects are English (Reading, Writing, Phonics, Spelling and Grammar), Maths and Science. You can read more about them by clicking here.

All the other subjects are referred to as our wider curriculum. You can find information about each of them by clicking here.

Curriculum Structure and Intent

 At Broadwater Down Primary School each year group works on a "project", lasting for the entire seasonal term. The children start with an engaging and inspiring idea and a project to work towards. Over the course of the term, they learn the knowledge, skills and understanding necessary in order to successfully fulfill the brief for their project. We call this our Discovery Curriculum.

It is underpinned by three main waypoints during each project:

The Inspire stage - the element which hooks the children's interest with an interesting project to work towards.

The Enrich stage - once the children have made some headway into the project we ensure that the have a rich cultural experience to extend and deepen their understanding of the knowledge and skills they have explored so far.

The Celebrate stage - the finale of the project which is the culmination of all the work done throughout and the fulfillment of the project brief.

Ready, Respectful, Safe

Our school rules can be described in three words: ready, respectful and safe. These behaviour expectations are built into our curriculum so that children are actively taught this behaviour during their learning experiences.

Adding a spoonful of Character

At our school we celebrate and nurture positive character traits. Our behaviour policy is a good example of how principles are based on mutual respect and kindness. In our curriculum, we carefully plan for specific traits to be developed, for example: agreeableness, bravery, resilience and honesty.

A study by the Education Endowment Foundation found that good character traits such as motivation, perseverance and self control under pin future success and increase employability. We aim to develop these ‘non cognitive’ factors to help close the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils.

We want our children to be strong, resilient, confident and independent learners ready for secondary school through practical strategies in school, such as:

• Mentoring
• Volunteering
• Outdoor learning
• Leadership opportunities
• Social and emotional programmes
• Key cultural and life experiences.

These social and cultural capital opportunities are embedded through the curriculum and from Years R to Year 6.