Learning at Waterloo Primary Academy
Curriculum Intent and Rationale:
Waterloo Primary Academy is a larger than average primary school, situated in Blackpool’s South Shore. Although we mainly serve a white British, working-class demographic, our area is becoming increasingly diverse and this is something that we celebrate. Our area is identified as an area of high deprivation and unemployment and some of our families face incredibly challenging situations. Our unapologetically ambitious curriculum, seeks to remove the barriers that these circumstances might bring.
Our children typically start school with very low entry points and poor language acquisition, so in our Early Years provision, we focus on making sure that our children are confident talkers. We develop the foundations of Early Reading through the systematic teaching of Essential Letters and Sounds phonics and by sharing our love of stories and books. The development of our environment and all of our interactions and routines are intentional. We have shaped our school environment to best enable the Early Years children to strengthen their core muscles through physical play. The children are supported to learn to work together, manage their feelings and ask questions through skilled, adult-facilitated play. The children learn nursery rhymes and stories and develop their mathematical thinking through direct teaching, based on maths mastery and exploration.
Developing language and vocabulary is a priority throughout school, as we passionately believe that communication is key to accessing learning and securing our children’s future success. Every lesson contains explicit vocabulary instruction. We deliberately teach Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary because we want children to be able to use this language in context and apply it to what they know.
We believe that our children deserve a curriculum that gives them improved life chances, by enabling social equity and mobility. Our curriculum is designed to raise pupils’ aspirations, by providing them with a wide range of practical learning experiences, developing their cultural capital, as well as teaching them about what is possible in terms of human creativity and achievement. We aim to build resilient, questioning learners, who are prepared to try things and know that it is ok to make mistakes. We want to equip our children to know what options are open to them when they leave Waterloo. We partner with local professionals who help to show our children that learning is a life-long joy. We want to send our children out into the world with developing employability and life skills, in order to help them to overcome the challenges that they face. We want to open the doors of opportunity to each child, helping them to recognise the potential they have to make a positive contribution, not only within their own community, but on a global scale.
Statistics show that children and teenagers in our area are vulnerable to criminal exploitation, gang culture, alcohol and drug abuse. Against this background, it is crucial that our curriculum teaches our children how to stay safe and gives them the tools to make choices which change their community. Our curriculum helps us to directly address key issues and priorities such as health (exercise, eating habits, healthy diet, healthy lifestyles), substance-related abuse (especially drug and alcohol use) and goals and future aspirations. This starts in Early Years and builds over time to a sophisticated understanding of the dangers of grooming, knife crime and the pitfalls and dangers of social media for our older children. We look to create a culture of ambition, balanced with a healthy dose of age-appropriate realism.
As a school that predominantly represents a white British demographic, we want our children to fully appreciate and embrace cultural diversity, learning about and experiencing a range of different cultural and faith heritages, as well as a range of diverse groups. We want them to learn about their place in the world, understanding and appreciating the differing backgrounds represented in the local, national and global populations. We actively and explicitly promote balanced viewpoints by teaching about cross-cultural friendship, respect, tolerance and understanding.
We believe the curriculum should be connected in a meaningful way, evidencing clear progression and should demonstrate a consistent approach throughout school. Our curriculum builds on big ideas and concepts so that children have the knowledge and skills to look wider than their immediate context and make different, aspirational choices. We are delighted to be working with Unity Schools Partnership and have adopted their curriculum known as CUSP (Curriculum with Unity Schools Partnership), which is underpinned by the very latest research evidence from education and the field of cognitive science.
In addition to this, we develop children’s character through our ‘Waterloo Way’ curriculum. In order to build character, we define the behaviours and habits that we expect children to demonstrate. We want to support our children to grow into adults who are polite, respectful, grateful and who put others before themselves. We believe that as staff teach these behaviours persistently and with consistency, and as children practise these behaviours over time, they become habits that positively shape how they feel about themselves and how other people perceive them.
Our curriculum has been carefully considered on every level, to ensure that our children have every opportunity to Achieve Amazing Things both now, and in the future. As a result, children leave Waterloo having achieved well academically, but also prepared as fluent, resilient, ambitious, lifelong learners, ready to thrive in the next stage of their education.
Welcome to Waterloo Primary Academy
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