Our Curriculum Vision

Through our Arboretum curriculum we aim to broaden our children’s understanding of themselves and others, promote and enhance parental support, raise aspirations and develop vocabulary.  This is as a direct response to the needs of our children and community.

We plan our curriculum using the overarching themes of identity, childhood, citizenship, locality, innovation and invasion. These themes allow the children to make connections as we know that children learn best building on prior knowledge. This approach makes the subjects more relevant and interesting for our pupils who have little experience of the world outside their immediate location.

Our curriculum is rich with knowledge-based facts that are progressively taught. We place an emphasis on developing the attributes our pupils need for future learning, with a direct link to the learning behaviours exemplified by ‘reach for the stars’. The strengths of our curriculum are that we identify and promote progressive subject specific vocabulary with themes that equip our pupils to build links and enhance their learning across other subjects. We empower children with skills and knowledge that are not practised within the home environment.

Our curriculum is delivered through the use of a quality text to ensure high expectations are in place, it provides knowledge and context to drive the objectives that need to be taught. It also promotes reading for pleasure and enjoyment.

We understand that children learn best when they are able to revisit and retrieve key knowledge. Our understanding of pedagogy has informed our curriculum design, our sequence of learning, and range of strategies that we use, designed to optimise teaching and learning.

Arboretum Primary underpins all its work with the aspirations of ‘Reach for the Stars’.  We include valuable first-hand experiences to enrich the curriculum.  We work hard to motivate, inspire and enthuse our learners.

We recognise the importance of parents as our partners in education. We actively provide a range of workshops, curriculum events and celebrations alongside our homework offer. This supports English, maths and the wider curriculum. All provide opportunities for our parents to feel confident and sufficiently equipped to support their child’s learning at home. 

Our curriculum is mapped carefully and delivered in subject specific or cross curricular lessons to facilitate optimal learning of the knowledge and skills. Religious Education and PSHE are highly valued at Arboretum as we recognise the importance of developing the moral and social skills of our children with particular regard to their emotional health and wellbeing.

We want our learners to become confident individuals who have a clear understanding of values such as equality, tolerance, respect, honesty, trust and many others. We want our learners to be adequately prepared for life in their community in the future. We aim to develop a strong sense of morality and integrity in every child. We want them to make decisions for the right reasons and in the best interests of their community. The impact will be that they are able to decide what is right and what is wrong and will be resilient to the influence of others