Implementation
Implementation of Our Curriculum at The Free School Norwich
Our Curriculum Leads have designed a comprehensive Curriculum to ensure a seamless and progressive approach to teaching and learning across all subjects. These documents detail the lead’s intent and implementation strategies, and the resultant impact. Long-term plans, vocabulary lists, assessment ideas, and progression maps are embedded within these documents, guaranteeing that our curriculum is both knowledge-engaged and systematically progressive in the development of skills and vocabulary.
Teachers actively seek meaningful connections between subjects, fostering the development of children’s vocabulary and providing opportunities for revisiting learning in diverse contexts. Structuring learning through relevant curriculum links supports retention via repetition and reminders, enabling the practical application of acquired knowledge and skills. Importantly, these links are purposefully planned, appearing on long-term curriculum maps to ensure they genuinely enhance learning. While inspirational, these links align with key lesson objectives.
To uphold progression and facilitate assessment, we opt for a discrete subject teaching approach. This allows us to draw from and respond to the rich traditions of individual academic disciplines and their specific vocabulary, body of knowledge, and skills. Mastery of these disciplines empowers children to establish robust connections across subjects and apply their knowledge and skills with versatility.
Recognizing the profound impact of learning behaviour on accessing the curriculum, The Free School Norwich is dedicated to ensuring that all our children develop and learn to the best of their ability. Aligned with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we believe that children learn most effectively when their basic physiological requirements and sense of safety, as well as their psychological needs such as belonging and accomplishment, are addressed before cognitive needs. This holistic approach encompasses learning about behaviour and emotions.
Our commitment to personal development and well-being involves teaching children to understand, regulate, and manage emotions. Additionally, we emphasize the application of critical thinking between sensation, emotion, and action. Encouraging empathy and understanding towards others, we teach the skills needed to foster resilience and responsibility, preparing students for active participation in society. The cultivation of a sense of pride and self-awareness is integral to this process.
Similar to other curriculum areas, these essential skills are directly taught in an age-appropriate manner, acknowledging that for some children, this may not align with their chronological age. We firmly believe that everyone has the right to feel safe, special, and to have their needs met. Our Behaviour Policy reflects the importance of social and emotional learning, creating an environment where each child feels ‘safe enough’ to engage fully in lessons.
To further strengthen personal development and well-being, our school has a clear set of shared values named C U THRIVE with each letter standing for a core value. These are as followed:
- Communication: Fostering caring relationships through talking and problem-solving.
- Understanding and Valuing Difference: Embracing differences in oneself, others, and the wider world.
- Trust: Building positive and purposeful relationships based on trust.
- Hard Work: Inspiring engagement through learning activities, leading to achievement.
- Respect: Placing respect at the core of everything we do.
- Independence: Cultivating responsibility as we grow and learn.
- Vitality: Generating productive energy by making the most of opportunities, leaving us happy, well, and fulfilled.
- Expectations: Establishing a cycle of high expectations within opportunities, resulting in personal bests, leading to praise, and constructive self-evaluation and reflection that continually informs our learning, behaviour, and emotions.
In addition to these values, the school has embraced further values within C U THRIVE that bolster children’s learning behaviours and confidence, preparing them to be 21st-century global citizens. The learning heroes of KS1 become stated values in KS2, reinforcing our commitment to comprehensive and holistic development.
