Curriculum
At Great Wood we provide a challenging, broad and balanced curriculum which meets all pupils’ needs and enables them to ‘aim high … and make a difference’. The many threads of our curriculum are woven together to:
- Support the development of agreed essential knowledge and skills.
- Develop the ‘whole child’ by promoting their spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development.
- Make the curriculum relevant and prepare them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.
The aims for each curriculum subject area are outlined in the links in this section, however, children learn through a whole school experience and in everything we do we aim high and make a difference as outlined in our Mission Statement and Child-friendly Mission Statement.
In addition to much of our learning being taught in discrete subjects, our curriculum also centres around exciting topics. Each topic has one or two lead subjects from the National Curriculum, which link to the topic to ensure that the curriculum has breadth and depth with clear progression. Each topic also includes ‘WOW experiences’ which are planned to enrich the curriculum and extend learning further. Teachers have identified crucial subject knowledge and skills to be learned during each topic. Teachers are aware of previous and future crucial learning and recap past crucial learning and make connections where appropriate to deepen understanding of our interconnected world. Our ‘Yearly Overviews’ provide a brief summary of the topics and detail the ‘WOW’ experiences, educational visits and visitors.
At Great Wood, Personal, Social, Health, Economic and Citizenship Education is part of a whole school approach. Our Values programme helps our children develop the basis of a strong moral compass and along with our Gold Leaf Code supports our drive for outstanding behaviour where all pupils are able to achieve their full potential in a safe and secure environment. Planned programmes of study for areas such as Medicines and Drugs, Finance Education, Relationships and Sex Education outline the key areas taught in each year group found under PSHEC Learning Overviews. Religious Education follows the Lancashire Agreed Syllabus.
Another two threads of our curriculum offer are our Key Drivers and our Effective Learning Habits. After consulting with our community, we identified skills and attributes as important life skills to practise and develop and these drive aspects of our curriculum planning; over each year we ensure that there are planned opportunities to develop all of the key drivers through our curriculum offer. As we are teaching, we regularly refer children to strategies that can help our them be successful. These Learning Habits originate from F. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
At Great Wood, we seek purposeful connections to our local area. As well as being in a Victorian seaside town, we are a short train ride from a historic city, near a national park and we take the school’s name from a small area of woodland which we own, that can be found on an 1834 map surrounded by marshland. We enhance learning where we can through the use of our locality. We are a partner school in Eden Project Learning, and subscribe to their Educational Programme for Morecambe Bay which aims to nurture a deeper, richer understanding of and care for Morecambe Bay.
Parents are invited to attend the curriculum meetings during the summer term, which take place after the Meet and Greet session with the class teacher. Throughout the year we also organise meetings and workshops linked to different areas of the curriculum. Details are communicated via ParentPay, our newsletter, website and TV in the foyer. If you have any specific questions, then please email the Headteacher at head@greatwood.lancs.sch.uk or arrange a meeting with the school office.