Our Curriculum

Curriculum Design and Approach

At Yarm Primary School we carefully design, plan and implement a curriculum which provides breadth, balance and depth of learning for every pupil.

Breadth – we look beyond the planned curriculum; involving children through quizzing and a deepening knowledge approach to broaden their knowledge and make authentic links across subjects, experiences and their lives.

Balance - At Yarm Primary it is our underlying belief that every child should feel valued and experience the feeling of success in a wide range of curriculum areas. In practice our curriculum places equal importance on core and foundation subjects ensuring that every child is given the opportunity to shine and flourish. Children’s physical and emotional wellbeing are as valued and important as academic development; as we understand that children will not be successful learners unless they are emotionally secure. 

Whilst striving for a balanced curriculum we acknowledge that the highest standards in core subject areas need to be secured. Reflecting all children’s potential and ambition drives us to remove barriers to learning for even our most complex learners. Therefore, we intend for every pupil to make progress both academically and personally. 

Depth - In developing our curriculum we looked at the Trusts citadels of learning and focused on what progress is - ‘Learning more and remembering more … and, therefore being able to do more’. The work we did in developing our learning from this point was influenced initially by ‘The learning curriculum’ IFT, which helped us understand recalling information in short term and long-term memory and how we could ensure knowledge is secure. We have more recently used the work of Kate Jones to help us to further develop our Deepening Knowledge approach. Children are given opportunities to make authentic horizontal and vertical links across the taught curriculum (there is a revisit of year group topics every half term to add depth) and previous leaning is referenced through retrieval practice approaches. Each classroom has a dedicated deepening knowledge learning wall which is added to as the year progresses and Quizzing is used to support deepening and broadening of knowledge; which goes beyond the planned curriculum.  

We intend for our curriculum to be progressive whilst allowing for opportunities to develop children’s interests and ‘exploit’ opportunities in the local, regional and international realm. We use a calendar of events to plan enrichment; year group, phase and whole school; linked to e.g. the well-publicised World Book Day but also other areas such as BSL, First Aid, Dot day (Art links), Diversity day etc.  Therefore the curriculum remains a dynamic thing; relevant and well-evaluated; so that it remains engaging and effective for all our children. 

Our Curriculum Documents