Curriculum
What does your child learn at school each day?
Find information about our curriculum subjects here.
Our aims are for every child to be 'caring, sharing and learning together' and we value celebrating success in school life to enable our children to become lifelong learners and responsible citizens in society. We encourage all of the children to ‘Go for Gold’ and aspire to try their very best.
Our vision and values translate into a creative, child-centered curriculum, which is broad and balanced to meet the needs of all children at every stage in their learning by making deliberate choices for the children attending a small community school in Old Windsor.
The lessons are carefully designed to meet the needs of all learners through the ‘Going for Gold’ approach, a deliberate choice encompassing our Royal links.
Lesson are adapted, whilst maintaining high expectations for all, so that all pupils have the opportunity to meet expectations. Selected approaches are used from Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction (Walkthrus, Tom Sherrington) to meet the needs of all learners and encourage them to challenge themselves a little further.
We encourage the children to have independence and ownership of their learning. Our curriculum is ambitious to challenge the more able learners through greater depth teaching. A curriculum which is also designed to give all learners, particularly the most disadvantaged or SEND children the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life through a clear drive for Quality First Teaching and ‘high aspirations for all’ drive across the curriculum.
Our curriculum is a framework for setting out the aims of our programme of education including;
- The knowledge and understanding to be gained at each stage (intent)
- Translating that framework over time into a structure, narrative and with subject specific pedagogy (implementation)
- Evaluating what knowledge and understanding children have gained against expectations (impact)
Addressing the learning gaps
Children may have gaps in their knowledge and understanding and have not grasped a key concept in one or more subjects. We use Quality First Teaching and summative assessments (on-going assessment in class) and have developed our curriculum maps to ensure the essential skills are covered in each class. To support the children to progress in their learning as well as looking after their mental health and well-being, it is important that we assess:
The 'stage' (skills they currently have) they are at in their learning
Rather than the 'age' (standard to attain at the end of each year) they are expected to be.
Further gaps will develop unless the children have a solid foundation and understanding of the basic skills in each subject.
At King's Court we are addressing the learning gaps through:
Rosenshine’s Principles: carefully selected use of approaches of cognitive supports, such as scaffolding and reading aloud
Phonics keep up groups: focusing on key gaps in phonics
Provision maps: small step targets for children with SEND
Influences on curriculum thinking
- Chris Quigley: The Essentials Curriculum
- Tom Sherrington - Walkthrus
- Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction (2012)
- Education Endowment Fund – adaptive teaching
- Quality First Teaching
- Kirschner - problem based and inquiry learning
