Like all schools, our curriculum has developed over time; taking account of the changing needs of our pupils, legislation and academic research. 

Some years ago, we further developed the role of subject leaders, and they defined the skills' progression within their subject, across all year groups. In 2019, we created a new Curriculum 1.0 document having redesigned the topics that we were going to teach. This document became the ‘bible’ for planning what we did with children. We then aligned our assessment system with the Skills Progression document (Curriculum 1.0). 

We have also looked at the work of cognitive scientists and thought about how to structure learning in a way that it ‘sticks’. There has been an ongoing conversation about curriculum overload and a concern that it can feel like a struggle to get everything done. We have also considered how to inform parents about what we do in school and this has led to the creation of a termly Unit Newsletter for parents. 

Our research highlighted the following: 

1. Progress means knowing more and remembering more. 
2. Prior knowledge allows learning of new content. 
3. We must consider how effectively we have selected a curriculum with: 

• ‘powerful’ knowledge 
• ‘transferable’ knowledge 
• Carefully ’sequenced’ knowledge 

This research led us to undertake further work on our curriculum in early 2020 when we worked as a staff to define the ‘powerful’ knowledge we wanted each child to learn, to set it in the broader context of a sequence of learning and to create opportunities for children to transfer this knowledge to learn new things and to deepen their understanding. 

We also took account of the four key principles about memory:

1. Deciding what content needs to be deeply embedded in long-term memory. 

2. Considering what pupils pay attention to. 

3. Avoiding overloading working memory. 

4. Providing spaced repetition for ‘overlearning 

In September 2020, we launched our Curriculum 2.0; where the key Knowledge, Skills, Understanding and Vocabulary are mapped out in each subject from the Foundation Stage to Year 6. This is then shared with the children through our Knowledge Organisers. 

Over time, we have developed the Curriculum area of our website as we would like it to be the ‘one-stop shop’ where visitors to the site can find not only the content and structure of our curriculum but also helpful guidance and resources to support learning at home. To make navigation easier, information is structured by Year Group and Subject. You can see examples of the children's work, which is also published in our weekly newsletter, by visiting Children's Work. You can also find out more about what specific curriculum areas look by visiting What the Curriculum looks like at OWPS.

For many years, we have worked hard to foster a love of reading. Reading is at the heart of our school and one of our strengths. For this reason, you will find additional information and guidance on how we develop children’s reading ability and how we foster their love of reading. In Key Stage One we use Little Wandle as our phonics scheme, and use books which are phonetically matched to the children's reading ability, predominantly from the Big Cat Collins Scheme. 

For more information about how our approach to the curriculum complies with our duties to the Equality Act 2010 and the Special Education Needs Disability Regulations 2014 regarding making the curriculum accessible for those with disabilities or special educational needs, please visit our webpage: Special Educational Needs (SEN) at OWPS.

To see work produced by children from across the school and covering all areas of the curriculum, please visit Children's Work.