Curriculum
Curriculum Structure
The Oaklands core values inform everything we do. Our curriculum content is based upon the national curriculum but our core values have shaped the content and the themes across each subject. We have added in units of work in order to stay true to our values of Show Respect, Take Pride and Love Learning and ensure that all our children understand their cultural roots and feel included.
The Oaklands curriculum is designed so that children love learning and know how to learn anything in the future. In order to do this they need excellent basic skills in speaking and listening, reading, writing and maths as well as good general knowledge. Research has shown that fluency in reading is key to success later in life and that a good general knowledge enhances reading comprehension. Reading is at the heart of our curriculum with each half terms work supported by an exciting range of diverse texts and our foundation subject knowledge supporting our nonfiction writing and our wide ranging guided reading programme.
Subject areas have been organised so that concepts complement each other as much as possible and children can extend their understanding beyond the subject boundaries. Each subject has an overview that shows the progression of knowledge over time.
Please click on the subject subheadings to see the curriculum mapping across each subject and each year group and how our core values link to our curriculum.
Individual Curriculum Unit Design and Implementation
In order to ensure high quality teaching in all subjects we use a mixture of:
- Specialist teachers (Music, French and PE)
- Commercially published schemes of work (RE, PSHE, Computing)
- Individually designed schemes of work that we have tailored to our cohort (Reading, Writing, Maths, Science, Art, DT, History and Geography)
For our individually designed schemes of work we have used Efrat Furst’s work in neuroscience to design each curriculum unit. The basic concepts are introduced and experienced to develop knowledge, then explored to develop a basic schema of understanding and then applied in different ways according to the subject so that a deep schema is embedded and concepts mastered. Key concepts are then revisited within our reading curriculum with specially written key texts dropped into guided reading sessions to revise and extend understanding. In this way we develop a broad understanding of the world and support children to use their reading skills to enhance their knowledge.
Our curriculum is constantly being reviewed, revised and improved and has developed year on year since 2014.
Please click on the Trip link for Trips for this academic year.
In order to enhance the children's learning and develop in their environmental awareness, it allows pupils to encounter experiences that would otherwise be unavailable in the class room as well as helping to develop their emotional and physical wellbeing.