Curriculum and Learning Review

The school councillors have been spending some time in their meeting reviewing the plans for the Wicklewood's updated curriculum plan. They looked at the challenge questions for the termly themes and how links are made across the themes between subjects. They were curious about how knowledge learned in one year group would help learning in a later theme.

Sienna and Jaxon thought that their Canopy theme for Year 3 was important because: 'We need trees to breathe and protect the Earth.' 'We should help the rainforest'.

Naomi and Oliver were keen that vocabulary in French was up-to-date and relevant: 'We need to learn words like 'hoodie' which we might actually have to use in a clothes shop in France'

For PE, councillors were keen that skills learnt would be used in full games and actual competitive environments or performances to test acquired ability. 'When you play cricket, it's important to play full games so that you can bowl, field and bat.' 'We should have gymnastics and dance performances.'

Henry and Oliver talked about knowledge that they learned in one year group or subject being helpful when completing other learning: 'We learnt about the Maya and that helped us with our suspense writing about a lost temple in English.' 'When we learn about the Greeks, we will use some of our knowledge from learning about the Romans.'

When councillors talked about what helped them learn, they gave several examples: Henry talked about the 'maths boxes and concrete materials'. Oliver and Naomi spoke about whiteboards, feedback and Talk4Writing: 'The story symbols are helpful to remember when you're writing but I didn't find performing the story that helpful. But I could see that some people would.' 'Whiteboards are good when you're working things out and answering  questions but I prefer to draft writing in my book.'