At Charlestown Primary School, our curriculum is designed with knowledge at its heart to ensure that children develop a strong vocabulary base and extensive understanding of the world. Our curriculum encompasses the knowledge, skills, experiences and opportunities our children receive.

We appreciate that a knowledge-rich curriculum does not simply mean memorising disconnected facts. Our goal is to deliver richly connected knowledge and skills which are revisited and built upon, leading to high levels of long-term retention and automaticity. 

Pupils develop relationships with knowledge so that they can put their knowledge to work in powerful, meaningful ways. Our curriculum is designed to equip children efficiently so they can make informed decisions at Primary school and beyond. We want our pupils to have great pride in their school and community. Whilst also promoting academic rigour, our curriculum is woven with opportunities to promote spiritual, moral, social, cultural, mental and physical development of all pupils. We hope for our learners to become global citizens who are considerate and curious about the world around them. 

We are determined to offer a broad, balanced and inclusive curriculum which is rooted in high-expectations and ambition for all our pupils, to ensure that we inspire, enrich and enlighten our learning community. Teachers use scaffolding techniques to ensure that everyone has equal access to our curriculum. 

We lead the way and INSPIRE our pupils’ enthusiasm for learning by ENRICHING their curriculum with hands-on experiences and ENLIGHTENING them, and our community, to work collaboratively and support each other.

Our curriculum is underpinned by the National Curriculum and is sequential with key knowledge, vocabulary and skills. This is presented in our ‘Whole School Curriculum Overviews’ which can be found below. This helps to ensure that teachers and pupils are clear with what they are expected to learn, how this links to other learning across the curriculum and how learning is revisited using ‘spacing’ and ‘retrieval’ strategies. 

All of the Charlestown Teaching Team promote high standards and expectations through our ‘Core Habits’ and ‘6 Ps’. 

Reading at Charlestown Primary School

Reading is at the very heart of our curriculum and as a school there are very few things as important to us as ensuring our children leave as capable and proficient readers who recognise the joy and love of reading. The Charlestown Reading Spine has been designed with the intention of ensuring that all children at the school are exposed to the very best fiction that has been written; enabling them to experience the intrinsic sense of joy that reading can bring, as well as developing their knowledge of the world and enriching our curriculum.

Our curriculum is based around key texts for each year group in every term. These texts are studied as part of our whole-class reading sessions. These books have been carefully aligned with the various History, Geography, Science, PSHE and Art areas of study to create a highly connected series of lessons, meaning children can make strong connections between subjects.

Our Reading Spine and well-resourced Library is representative and diverse to help ensure that we develop responsible, tolerant and well-informed young people, who are ready to make a positive impact in the world. 
 

The Learning Community and Learning Experiences
At Charlestown Primary School we aim to: 

• Engage parents with the curriculum through thorough communication and workshops. 
• Build links within the local community through purposeful learning opportunities.
• Provide leadership opportunities for children so that they can have an active role in school life.
• Endorse a ‘Buddies’ system across the school to help create a sense of belonging. For example, classes join together to celebrate learning, teach one another new skills (playground games etc) and enjoy stories.
• Make use of the fantastic grounds we have at our school, including a bike track, all weather sports pitch, the Wild Tribe area, polytunnel etc.
• Provide trips to important local and national events which are sequenced and carefully thought out to enhance the curriculum. We think about the many great opportunities on our doorstep, along with the great opportunities further afield. 

How is our curriculum delivered? 

Leaders have carefully considered not only what the children learn, but the way in which it is delivered, assessed and reviewed, in addition to the environment in which pupils learn. The philosophy at Charlestown Primary is based on research from cognitive science and how long-term retention of knowledge occurs.  Our curriculum has been created using current educational research on teaching, pedagogy and curriculum. Here are some examples of key educators who have helped guide our decisions as a school. 

Here are some of the key principles that underpin our curriculum:

How Are Teachers Supported to Deliver a High-Quality Curriculum?

Teachers benefit from a range of CPD to develop their ‘curriculum thinking’. At Charlestown Primary School we benefit from expert knowledge amongst our own subject leaders, but also from specialists from across our Trust; Kernow Learning. Trust Specialists provide regular updates along with school visits where monitoring and coaching helps to provide challenge and support.

An Evolving Curriculum 

The impact of our curriculum can be seen in the pupils’ development of detailed knowledge and skills across the curriculum. This impact is reflected in the work that pupils produce, along with national test scores and assessment checkpoints that are carefully planned into the curriculum (please see subject specific documents under ‘subject information’). 

At Charlestown Primary School, we strive to ensure that pupil attainment is line with or exceeding age-related expectations and that pupils are fully prepared for their next stage of education and ready to contribute positively to society as a whole. 

Through the use of monitoring (pupil voice, lesson observations, outcomes, data analysis etc), leaders regularly review and reflect on the intent and implementation of our curriculum to ensure that it has the desired impact.