Curriculum

We believe in a broad and holistic curriculum, delivered in innovative ways to excite and engage children, and we believe that exceptional results should be a by-product of the education that we offer, not the exclusive focus.

Our curriculum ensures that learners construct meaning through active engagement and through gaining agency over their learning. For learning to be fully understood and embedded, our curriculum ensures that meaningful connections are made between prior knowledge, new knowledge and the processes involved in learning.

We also believe that learning is an active rather than a passive process.

Inquire-based learning

Our inquiry-based approach encourages pupils to explore key concepts as threads throughout all areas of the curriculum. Engaging content ensures that our curriculum is knowledge-rich whilst interweaving key skills that allow pupils the opportunity to make sense of the changing world around them.

 It all begins with a question...

Inquiry-based learning is an approach that emphasises the learners' role in the learning process. Units of inquiry begin with a key question, created in partnership between teachers and pupils. Teachers facilitate pupils to explore this question and work towards an end of unit celebration or presentation. Teachers plan units of inquiry skilfully to ensure that all elements of the national curriculum are covered, whilst fulfilling pupils’ interests and curiosities.

Our inquiry-based approach uses the national curriculum as a benchmark for defining the desired knowledge and skills for each year group or phase. The national curriculum is a starting point and spring board for our teaching and learning. Subject leadership teams have established progression frameworks for their subject which ensure cohesive sequencing and opportunities for consolidation of related concepts and skills from Year 1 to Year 6.

The curriculum is organised into termly foci: Create, Discover & Explore. This ensures that all areas of the National Curriculum are covered, and allows for in depth exploration of a focus subject area across a term.

Create

At it’s core, Create is a celebration of the arts. Arts subjects provide a plethora of benefits, such as helping pupils build a sense of identity, enabling them to make sense of the world, as well as having a profoundly positive impact on well-being and mental health.

Our aim during the Create term is to develop pupils’ knowledge and skills in art & design through an inquiry-based approach. Each year group looks at a range of artists and craft-makers, building an artistic vocabulary as pupils move up the school, in order to respond to their works in a variety of ways, such as drama, music and literature as well as art. 

With a whole term dedicated to Create, we are able to explore each technique and artist in depth, and give the pupils agency when it comes to their learning. As well as building artistic skills, pupils will have a wealth of opportunities to research, express themselves and develop their communication skills. They can become performers, gallery curators and art critics. As Henri Matisse said "Creativity takes courage" and our Create celebrates this.

Here are the inquiry questions that have driven our units of work this term:

Discover

The Discover term is all about discovering and unearthing the great mystery of what came before! It is about real people who lived, and real events which happened in the past: history. Our children learn to better understand the world as it is through the study of the world as it was.

Our pupils will consider how the past influences the present, what past societies were like, how these societies organised their politics, and what beliefs and cultures influenced people’s actions. Emphasis is put on the complexity of the past and how the nature of historical narratives is that they are constructed and often contested. Consequently, children develop a critical mind and disciplinary thinking by exploring the past from differing perspectives. As they do this, a focus on sequence, time and chronology helps our children develop a chronological framework for their knowledge of significant events and people and how these relate to each other.

In researching the past, they find and scrutinise evidence, and come to their own conclusions in order to argue their point of view. They are supported in developing the confidence to build strong, robust arguments whilst fostering an open mind which allows them the flexibility to incorporate new perspectives into their thinking. Fundamentally, they explore and appreciate the diversity of human experience, and in doing so, understand more about themselves as individuals, as members of society and as global, socially responsible citizens.

We believe all of this will give our pupils the skills and confidence required to question and influence the people and communities around them and the power to affect change should they ever need to, thus better preparing them for the world of tomorrow.

Our inquiry questions this term are:

 Explore

Our Explore term is a time full of adventure and excitement. Through the teaching of geography, design and STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), we want to expose children to endless opportunities to inquire.

Our curriculum is designed to instil in pupils a curiosity of the world which will remain with them for the rest of their lives, equipping them for further education and beyond. With a focus on hands-on learning and real world applications, pupils develop life-long skills such as curiosity, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, communication and collaboration.

Children acquire new knowledge and skills whilst working independently and together, as well as develop the resilience and passion to create their own projects from thought, to paper, to reality. We teach them how to take pride in the process it took to get there, not just the result.

During our Explore term, Braywick students become intrepid explorers ready to take on the world they live in!

Teaching children to be all-rounders

We provide an ambitious, coherent and rich curriculum which gives every child the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life beyond primary school. We aim to enable our pupils to become confident and independent learners with a passion to succeed and a curiosity for the world around them.

Our aim is for all pupils to become empowered activists for change, creative problem solvers and ambitious individuals who confidently excel in all they do.