Our Curriculum
At HWPS, we teach the National Curriculum objectives through projects that are written by Cornerstones and adapted by us to meet the needs of our children.
Each project has links to some of the 10 big ideas that run through the curriculum. These support children with making links from their previous learning. The 10 ‘Big ideas’ are –
- Humankind
- Processes
- Creativity
- Investigation
- Materials
- Nature
- Place and space
- Comparison
- Significance
- Change
These big ideas run through – History, Geography, Art, DT and Science. Each of these projects are carefully thought out, with key knowledge and skills identified that the children are learning, which is progressive from previous learning experiences.
Each term, there is a History or Geography driver project, with other smaller subject specific projects running alongside. Each project starts with something to ‘engage’ the children in their new project and hook them into their learning. The children then start to ‘develop’ their knowledge/ skills as they move through the lessons. Once they have gained some knowledge they then start to apply it in an ‘innovate’ stage before drawing all of their knowledge and skills together in an ‘express’ stage. During each of these stages teachers are adapting the activities and learning to make it personal for our children and their experiences.
RE, PSHE, PE, French and Music sit outside of our Cornerstones curriculum and we follow different progressive programmes of study.
Alongside this, we have written an Essential Experiences programme to ensure that by the time children leave our school they would have been able to meet a wide range of people, or visit places they may not get to at home.