Year group curriculum plans, knowledge organisers and weekly newsletters can all be found here on class pages.

Curriculum Intent

At St Dennis Primary Academy, we are passionate about ensuring our curriculum is designed to broaden horizons.  We intend to provide a wealth of opportunities and engage and motivate our children so that by the time they leave, they have the greatest number of choices and options open to them.

Our curriculum reflects our key values, which have personal development at their core. These are aspiration, courage, achievement, friendship, teamwork and responsibility. These weave through every aspect of our curriculum along with spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Curriculum Drivers - We have identified key drivers that are based around factors we have considered - how we can make the most of our local and regional location, how can we best champion the culture and climate we value, and what backgrounds and previous experiences our pupils have. 

All these drivers intend to ensure that every child, irrespective of their starting point, achieves at the very highest standards, develops life-long skills such as independence, confidence, resilience along with the virtues of empathy, kindness and respect.

Real-life experiences - Our curriculum aims to help our pupils to appreciate and be interested in the wider world  around them and to inspire ‘awe and wonder’. We want children to be curious and be provided with magical moments that open doors to worlds that children don’t even know exist.  The aim is that children are excited, engaged and continue to be curious.

Oracy - Being articulate, engaging with others positively and to learn through spoken language is a key intent of our curriculum. We aim to develop the physical skills of oracy, along with vocabulary and grammar.  In turn we also aim to ensure that oracy develops thinking skills, so children can express their feelings, their knowledge and explain their understanding.  It is also an aim to develop key social skills, including the ability to work co-operatively through active listening and showing respect and tolerance of each other’s opinions.

Environment and Community - We want our children to have a sense of pride in their local area and understand that the world is beyond their immediate doorstep.  Our curriculum aims to develop a sense that their home and the wider world is a wonderful place to live now, and in the future. Our curriculum provides opportunities to experience the richness of the world’s diversity and show how they can care about its management and sustainability. Also, that working collaboratively helps this to happen.

Wellbeing - Children being physically and mentally healthy so they have the strength to be successful and happy, is  a key element in our curriculum intent. We aim to ensure that children have the knowledge, understanding, skills and confidence to make healthy decisions and choices in the future, as throughout their lives our children may face difficult challenges.   

Please visit our curriculum subject pages to read about how we implement each subject and the impact. 

Curriculum Implementation

St Dennis Primary Academy is passionate about reading and storytelling.  It is at the heart of our curriculum because we know that the capacity to learn and to enjoy learning goes hand-in hand with reading skill. Therefore, we strive to nurture life-long readers. Oracy also underpins our curriculum implementation and pupils are ‘taught to talk’ and ‘learn through talk’ thus developing physical, linguistic, cognitive and social and emotional skills. With both reading and oracy being central to our curriculum implementation, we ensure that vocabulary which enriches knowledge and understanding about the world is taught.

Each year group studies a new topic every half term which is approached through a ‘Big Question’.  This ignites a thirst for knowledge through investigation, engagement, imagination, thought and discussion. Our ‘Big Questions’ do not have one correct answer and inspire the need to explore every possibility and share findings.  

In order to explore, a range of stimulating and high-quality resources and experiences are utilised.  These include our ‘Stunning Starts’ where an engaging activity brings a topic to life and launches the ‘Big Question’.  Real-life experiences are key, so we use visits and visitors to enhance and deepen knowledge as they provide opportunities for generating questions and further enquiry and research. We also introduce our pupils to a diverse range of art, music and drama.  We like to take advantage of experiences and opportunities that arise; these might link to local, national or international events.   All topics culminate in a ‘Fabulous Finish’ where parents, carers and family members are invited into school to share in our children's findings.

At St Dennis Primary Academy, all teachers are responsible for providing an inclusive curriculum that is differentiated for those with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND). We have high expectations for all pupils and are committed to ensuring our curriculum complies with the Equality Act 2010 and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014.  Our curriculum policy emphasises the importance of providing an inclusive learning environment for all pupils including those with SEND. We therefore consider ways of minimising and reducing barriers so that all pupils are included. Additional information on this can be found in our SEND Information Report, SEND Policy and Equality Policy.  

In addition to the subject based curriculum are ‘Dazzle Days’ where children develop their knowledge, understanding and skills through activities planned around promoting and enhancing our core values.  These lessons are a creative way of enriching our curriculum further and enabling our children to experience their learning in a way that challenges them and gives opportunities for all children to ‘dazzle’ us in so many different ways!  Each half term, we use a picture booked linked to current learning to stimulate discussions, build on vocabulary and enrich learning.

Further enrichment is through vast array of extra-curricular opportunities and outdoor learning where every child can be involved. These experiences, along with the teaching of a range of rich vocabulary within our designed curriculum, give our children the essential knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed now and in the future.

Throughout our curriculum, we weave the British Values of democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law, mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs, and we explicitly encourage them to value diversity.

PSHE learning is also inherent in all curriculum areas and is routed in three core themes: health and well-being, relationships and living in the wider world.  Responsibility is key within our curriculum and this is particularly evident through our Mentors, School Council, Eco Council and Mental Health Ambassadors whose projects lead into whole-school learning.

When implementing our curriculum, we adhere to our Trauma and Mental Health Informed School Relationship Policy where we are committed to educational practices which protect, relate, regulate and reflect.

A new addition to the curriculum this year is 'Memory Masters' as we recognise the value in pupils having the opportunity to revisit, recall, revise, remember, reinforce, relearn and reflect upon previously taught content.  This is in addition to our weekly 'Four from before' sessions for science, history, geography and RE which have key concepts mapped for every week, enabling children to revisit this critical knowledge.

Mental Health is a core focus with the use of the Boxall Profile to create class, group and individual plans.  Learning behaviours will also be developed through the curriculum and values further explored.  One example of this will be team building days at the beginning of the year where children will achieve, be aspirational, show courage and responsibility, use teamwork skills and show great friendship.

Learning dispositions and character traits are developed. Children are taught about motivation and how to develop a growth mindset when faced with different types of challenge. Children who display these attributes are celebrated in assembly each week.

Marking and feedback has been reviewed in line with the EEF Report ‘A marked improvement? A review of the evidence on written marking’ to include greater emphasis on pupil editing, verbal feedback, targets, live marking and whole class feedback to ensure rapid progress.

Please visit our curriculum subject pages (above) to read about how we implement each subject and the impact.