Curriculum

Curriculum Intent

At Howard Community Academy we aim to provide a curriculum which supports the needs of our children to engage positively with learning. With reading at the heart of our approach, we aim to increase childrens’ levels of oracy and literacy, enabling them to learn to read and read to learn. With a key focus on developing vocabulary levels, we aim to inspire children to aim for excellence, thrive and fully develop as rounded individuals through developing resilience and skills for life.

Our children are at the heart of our curriculum. They have the opportunity to develop an understanding of our school values and build self-esteem and confidence. Our challenging curriculum is designed to respond to the needs of our children both in and outside of school.

Our values and vision are for children at Howard Community Academy to:

• Be successful and ambitious learners who are resilient in face of a challenge
• Enjoy learning and love coming to school
• Feel safe and know they are cared about
• Take pride in where they live and their community

We believe that being inquisitive and making links in learning is crucial to building deeper levels of understanding and enabling children to fully develop their understanding of the world.

Interleaving our values through our curriculum we will:

• broaden children’s knowledge of the world – increase subject vocabulary
• develop curiosity
• build on relationships
• develop skills to support lifelong learning

Through first-hand experiential learning, children’s learning will be enriched and enhanced. We aim to develop children’s cultural capital through rich experiences, visits, and extra-curricular activities. For children to thrive, we build children’s self-esteem through promoting healthy attitudes and can-do approaches across the curriculum.

Implementation

Using a cross-curricular approach (where appropriate), we provide learning which is meaningful and relevant. Through providing exciting and stimulating topics for learning, children are encouraged to have high aspirations and aim for excellence. Redesigned and implemented from September 2020, our curriculum is a two-year rolling programme to ensure full coverage and progression of knowledge and skills in all subjects. We recognise the importance of subject leaders within a successful curriculum and through a reflective approach to our curriculum design, we support our subject leaders to develop their knowledge and expertise to lead subject areas effectively.

As a result of our carefully designed curriculum, our children will be able to use their knowledge and skills to fully engage in life experiences.