Grasmere Academy
Our Curriculum philosophy
Our school vision is the starting point for the bespoke curriculum that we have created for our children:
"At Grasmere Academy, overtime we have carefully crafted a school that embeds a highly inclusive ethos. We believe that no matter what the stage of development of a child, we will ensure that our children make progress. Instead of making children ‘fit into’ a school system, we will actively look for ways to see how we can change in order to meet the needs of our children. We have adopted a motivational and engaging teaching and learning pedagogy, steeped in research and mastery, which reflects how the working world has changed, It is our moral imperative to prepare our community for this. The world we live in requires innovators, problem solvers, critical and creative thinkers and culturally aware citizens. it is our drive to prepare our children for a life unimaginable."
Before we look at curriculum design, it is important to understand what our school offers on a wider basis, this model is how all the different elements and unique features of Grasmere create the spirit of our school, but how they are so intrinsically linked together to provide a rich learning platform for our children
Our school model
Our Teaching and Learning Model
We developed this learning model ourselves and it is pivotal to teaching and learning practice in school, it has been developed using research from the EEF’s Metacognition and Self Regulation Guidance Report, Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction and further reading around retrieval practice and developing children’s working memory. It is used as a blue print for curriculum design to ensure constant recapping of key knowledge and skills in order yo create relevant links in sequencing concepts to achieve maximum success.
Our Curriculum Structure
At Grasmere Academy we teach Maths and Literacy throughout the mornings, which covers a range of content and essential basic skills which can be found on those curriculum pages. In the afternoons, we teach projects. The main driver of these projects are Geography and History, linked with Art, DT and Computing, where applicable. Information on the individual subject knowledge and content to be taught can be found on the relevant curriculum pages, however an overview can be found on each class page. All other subjects are taught discreetly.
The Long Term Curriculum Overview is a snapshot of the curriculum coverage across the core subjects. The rationale behind identifying these subjects as our ‘core curriculum’ is that these are the subjects which underpin our projects.
Curriculum mapping has identified the ‘technical information’ needed for each subject and show the continuity of skills development and curriculum knowledge needed and these can be found on the subject area pages of this website.