Curriculum

The curriculum at Slade will be enriched with experiences, immersive, knowledge-engaged and also allows children to explore the wider world around them.

We want our children to leave Slade with a passion for learning and fully prepared for the challenges they will face in their education and later life.

Slade Primary Whole School Curriculum Overview 2023-24

Slade Curriculum

• Our curriculum aims to provide children with a broad and academic programme that closely follows the National Curriculum.

• It is a coherent and carefully sequenced (knowledge engaged) curriculum based on the principles of cognitive science. There is a focus on the development of literacy and the application of acquired knowledge to ensure children access the curriculum at a depth to ensure a deep and enduring understanding in discrete subject areas. 

• The content and experiences within our curriculum are designed to accumulate and address the gaps in cultural capital of all our students in particularly the disadvantaged. Our extra-curricular offer supports our provision, with a focus within each subject thus helping to form stronger schemata for long term retention.

Principles, practices, and strategies 

To support our children’s curriculum access, we draw on a number of principles, practices and strategies to provide the best support. One of the key principles is for the children to receive the highest quality teaching within their classroom across the whole curriculum. However, we recognise that some of our pupils require a bespoke and personalised curriculum using more specialist intervention and support. 

Teachers plan specifically for children with special educational needs and disabilities, drawing on support and continuous professional development from subject leaders and the inclusion team as well as utilising assessment tools such as those discussed on our inclusion page. 

We hold regular CPD sessions focusing specifically on supporting our most vulnerable pupils and are constantly developing the breadth of provision and intervention for children with special educational needs and disabilities across the curriculum.

At Slade we use Widgit symbol support to ensure we make our teaching, routines and environment visually accessible to all children. We have Widgit available in over 80 languages using the dual language pack. You will see Widgit in lots of places in school and within the children’s curriculum resources.

We use a variety of key support methods to support all aspects of the children’s development including high quality teaching, resources, and intervention. Please see below for an overview of support methods laid out within the four areas of the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Code of Practice:

At Slade we are relentless and ambitious in our drive to ensure all aspects of the curriculum are accessible to everyone and are constantly developing our practice. We use a variety of tools to make sure that all children regardless of their needs can access the same topics as their peers and can make at least good progress. We offer 

1. a universal level- support for all pupils but particularly our most vulnerable 20%

2. a targeted level- support for most pupils with SEND in each class
3. a personalised level- support for pupils working at pre-key stage and those with more complex needs e.g., SSPP or EHCP in place

An example of the adaptive teaching can be seen below where we adapted the Year 6 History Topic on World War I to ensure it was accessible to all learners. We did this by providing:

• a wow starter
• a class mnemonic
• a set of concrete objects/ objects of reference to connect and cue the children in to the topic
• key visual resources including differentiated word webs, vocabulary sheets and photograph and Widgit supported activities, writing frames etc.
• personalised books
• practical activities including tuff trays/ small world play