The curriculum at Market Weighton Infant School is designed to provide opportunities for all our children to develop the skills to be successful in the future. We teach English (language, reading and writing), Maths, Science, Computing and Design & Technology as well as History, Geography, Art & Design, Music, Physical Education, Religious Education, Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE). We weave Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural (SMSC) and British Values development through our whole curriculum. We are proud that our curriculum gives our children the skills, confidence and self-belief to become the “responsible citizens” of the future.

The curriculum provides us with a means to fulfil our school’s core purpose:

“To help children to do today what they will be able to do independently tomorrow by becoming confident, successful life-long learners and responsible citizens.”

We have a strong focus on the key knowledge and skills for each curriculum subject so that children make progress (knowing more, remembering more, being able to do more) and therefore learn (a change in long-term memory). We also ensure that our children receive high quality learning opportunities and experiences both within and beyond the classroom which nurtures their individual talents and enriches the curriculum. 

Careful analysis and discussion about our pupils’ backgrounds, life experiences and culture has helped us to design a curriculum with three key priorities underpinning every subject area. We believe that by focusing on the following key priorities our children will be ready to “take their next steps to tomorrow’s world”.

Our curriculum priorities are:

1. Aspiration – help pupils relate their learning to the world of work & broaden horizons about a wide range of career options & challenge stereotypes

2. Independence – (1) develop metacognitive skills (thinking about own thoughts) to plan, think, problem solve, make decisions & evaluate and (2) develop executive function skills (working memory, attention, self-regulation) to take in information, filter it, make choices, stay focused and plan.

3. Motivation – encourage engagement through praise and reward, challenge, repetition, effective questioning, co-operation, “hands-on” experiences and building resilience.

We carefully design, plan and implement a curriculum which provides breadth, balance and depth of learning for every pupil:

Breadth of learning

Based on the National Curriculum: we aim to make the curriculum exciting and stimulating while ensuring that children achieve the end of Key Stage 1 curriculum expectations in the core and foundation subjects. We have carefully considered the end points to which the curriculum is building towards with a clear progression through the Nursery up to Year 2 (the end of Key Stage 1). Each subject has a detailed Progression of Knowledge and Skills detailing expectations by year group which we devised using the KS1 National Curriculum expectations and the statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. The objectives for each subject have been carefully sequenced so that the children's knowledge builds from what they have learned prviously to the less familiar and new content.

Balance of learning

We have designed, organised and planned our curriculum to ensure every child receives an appropriate mix of academic and personal development. This means that our curriculum places particular importance on the basic skills of reading, writing and mathematics as well as the rest of the curriculum areas, but also gives high priority to ensuring that our curriculum nurtures our children's well-being so that they develop high self-esteem, self-confidence and resilience. It is our underlying belief that every child should feel valued and experience the feeling of success in a wide range of curriculum areas. We understand that children will not be successful learners unless they are emotionally secure, settled and happy at school. Children’s physical and mental wellbeing are as valued and important as academic development. This is echoed in a quote from Carl Jung:

“An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.”

Our balanced approach to the curriculum is not at the expense of high standards in core subject areas. High standards and enabling children to reach national expectations and above is of vital importance if they are to succeed at the next stage of their education and go on to achieve full and happy lives and careers.

Our full and rich curriculum, with its own unique range of experiences, ensures that every pupil at Market Weighton Infant School makes continual progress both academically and personally. Teachers endeavour to recognise individual talents and to provide children with the opportunities to help their skills to shine and flourish.  

Depth of learning

Our definition of progress is:

“The widening and deepening of essential knowledge, skills, understanding and learning behaviours”. 

We design, organise and plan our curriculum to ensure that children are not merely covering content but achieving a depth and mastery to their learning which enables them to use their skills and understanding in all areas of the curriculum.

Repetition and practise: We build in many opportunities for repetition and practise opportunities for essential knowledge, skills and understanding in every subject. This ensures that children are able to revisit previous learning, which allows them to gradually develop a deeper understanding and mastery of the skills and processes within subjects, at their own pace and in the best possible way for each individual child. Our children are introduced to simple, age-appropriate ways of understanding how their brains work. This helps our children to understand how they know more and remember more.

Focus on developing vocabulary: Our progression grids include the key vocabulary that children are expected to understand and begin using in their spoken and written outcomes across different subjects. We teach children vocabulary as a key part of every lesson.

High quality texts: Reading is very much at the heart of everything we do at Market Weighton Infant School and the texts and stories used within each topic have been carefully chosen to inspire a love and enjoyment of reading.