We will help children to be curious, ask probing questions and be brave in finding solutions.

They will engage with the familiar and be engaged by the unusual, be immersed in language and communicate in multiple languages, know how to practise, be resilient and challenged, be proud of their local environment and think on a global scale, work individually and add their voice to the many, accept help, give charitably and embrace altruism, love difference, be different and stand up for the rights of others just because it is the right thing to do.

We want them to be relentlessly creative, critically curious and to live ambitiously.

Our intention is to create a culture of enquiry, curiosity and challenge that permeates both explicit and hidden curricula.

We use the Curious City Curriculum which inspires and guides our teachers to create contextually relevant enquiry-led experiences. This enquiry-led approach is enabling our school to create a bespoke, locally focused curriculum over the course of two years that goes beyond the National Curriculum 2014.

The skeleton of curious and creative learning opportunities, progressively planned and matched to cognitive development, exposes learners to the wider world in carefully planned stages. The skeletons provide just enough guidance whilst enabling our teachers to inspire learners with local people, places and stories relevant to the school’s locality.  The current structure also has plenty of room to respond to the ever-changing world.  Enquiries are shaped by our school over time. Our curriculum will be unique but not isolated; we are part of a family of curious, enquiry-led settings and collaborate regularly at learner, teacher and leader level.

We implement the enquiry-led approach in several ways. 

Using seven themes that help to steer and give a particular flavour to an enquiry, learners seek answers to questions posed. The seven themes help teachers ensure that a broad range of perspectives are offered during a year, and that they understand the purpose of the enquiry. This helps create a balance of experiences each and every year and ensures a breadth of experience in every year group.

States of Being (below) enable learners to focus on and/or combine powerful knowledge in different enquiries. Each knowledge-engaged state symbolises an aspect of the curriculum, helping learners to master both the know of and know how of a subject, not just remember it. For instance, we want our learners to be Scientists, not just learn about science. As a result, whilst we have enquiry skeletons, we build on these responding to the needs of learners.  As they get older, we help them cross-pollinate states. We want learners to discover for themselves that they can be an Author, Scientist, Geographer and Philosopher at the same time and that some adults combine these states to become Archaeologists, for instance. We want our learners to see the interconnection between what they are learning and how this knowledge is applied.

Cognitive development aligned with enquiry-led learning

In a nutshell, enquiry-led learning provokes learners with key questions too big to answer in one go, but not so conceptually large that they cannot understand. The purpose is to guide learners through a scaffolded process, answering the big question with a piece of writing for example, performance or animation. As cognitive development, emotional literacy and language immersion underpin the Curious-city approach, as well as purposeful links to mastery-led learning principles, we recognise children's awareness of the world develops as they mature and that this has a significant impact on their ability to learn. Our job is to help learners make sense of the world, not just expose them to it.

More than the National Curriculum

Lessons may also feel different in our setting from the norm. Think of a child’s time in school as a continuum of experiences rather than a set of lessons. Sometimes experiences are short, sharp and immersive, other times they are light-touch events over a longer period of time. This is exactly what a curious, knowledge-engaged curriculum should be. The usual Author (literacy) and Mathematicians (numeracy) teaching sequences continue, enhanced by locally rich and relevant experiences through the inclusion of significant people, places and stories by weaving in faith, community and culture into enquiries. National Curriculum subject objectives from Science, History, Geography, Art & Design, Design and Technology, to Music are woven throughout enquiries as seen on the Whole School Enquiry Overview. Some subjects (renamed using the States of Being) are taught discreetly, such as Foreign Languages, Physical Education, Religious Education (Discovery RE) PSHE and SMSC (Jigsaw), where possible links are made, but more often than not, they are stand-alone experiences.

The seven themes enable learners to become:

Geographers • Scientists • Musicians • Authors • Philosophers • Mathematicians • Artists • Engineers • Historians • Linguists • Athletes

The impact of Curious-city can be seen and heard as well as represented in outcomes. 

Impact can be seen through pupil books, displays and challenges the children produce. The process of enquiry, as well as final outcomes, are represented within individual pupil Enquiry books. In classrooms, enquiry working walls demonstrate the learning journey; States of Being characters should feature in books, classroom displays and visual timetables as well as our website and newsletters. Our children and families also talk about the approach positively.  We know that in time, it will affect our reading and writing outcomes as the contexts and purpose for being an Author, for instance, become stronger and stronger.

To find our more about our local, knowledge-engaged, globally connected, enquiry-led curriculum ask us about the deliberate action we are taking to shape our curriculum to meet the needs of our learners and community that we are proudly a part of.