Curriculum

At Chawton CE Primary we are incredibly proud of our bespoke curriculum which has been designed and written by our staff to be relevant to our children who live in, or around, a historically rich small village in rural Hampshire.

Alongside our core values of Love, Courage and Fellowship sit our big ideas for our curriculum. These are: (resolving) conflict, diversity and the environment. These have been chosen as we feel they are important concepts for our children to develop an understanding of in order to be successful and happy citizens.

The core subjects of English: reading and writing, and mathematics are vital for all children to master to support them in accessing a wide and fulfilling curriculum, both here and in further education opportunities.   Our text driven curriculum drives our Learning Quest approach;  reading development and enjoyment of reading are at the heart of all learning at Chawton CE Primary School and opportunities are facilitated to practise and embed reading and writing skills across all curriculum subjects.

All other National Curriculum subjects are taught through our interdisciplinary approach: these are called our Learning Quests and are set as questions for the children to inquire into. However, some units of learning may be taught in discrete sessions; this is always true for Religious Education.

Each Learning Quest has a driver subject, such as history, geography or science alongside the rich text. Links between curriculum subjects and prior knowledge are made whenever possible to support our inter-disciplinary curriculum. This helps our children to understand the purpose for their learning, to apply learning to new contexts successfully and to answer their inquiry question. Their findings are presented to parents at the end of each Learning Quest in a variety of ways, such as a performance, an art gallery, a tea-duel or even an Escape Room activity!

The Progression of Knowledge documents show the importance of building blocks of knowledge and revisiting these to ensure strong, secure knowledge. Learners are supported in becoming effective learners; metacognition skills such as retrieval practice, dual coding and  interleaving are fundamental in gaining knowledge and are used across all subjects. 

Our planning overviews and detailed separate subject planning documents demonstrate this; they are reviewed and adapted regularly.  Threaded throughout our curriculum, is a responsive safeguarding  and well-being curriculum.

Our core values of Love, Courage and Fellowship and our curriculum big ideas of conflict, diversity and environment are central to all aspects of our curriculum and permeate through our daily lives here at Chawton. We focus on understanding how these are played out in fiction, in history, in our society and try to understand how these have impacted or will impact on people’s lives. We want our Early Years curriculum to prepare our children for their time at Chawton and for our children to achieve happiness and success.