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Ysgol Y Castell Learning from each other... Succeeding together!

Our School Curriculum

A school curriculum is everything a learner experiences in school. When designing the curriculum at Ysgol y Castell the needs of our learners are at the forefront of our thinking. ​ We give detailed consideration to "Why, What & How we teach"

The Unique Factors of Ysgol y Castell

How can we support these factors?

What will be our values and behaviours that will drive our vision?

Our Vision

To inspire all our children to be the very best they can in all that they do. Enabling the development of skills which will provide them with the strongest start to be successful in an ever-changing world.

Our Vision is based on the unique factors of the school, the four purposes and the responses of surveys completed by all stakeholders.

Our Values & Ethos

At Ysgol Y Castell we believe that:

  • each pupil enriches our school with their individual talents and personalities
  • each pupil should have a sense of belonging that begins within their local community
  • we provide a happy, safe and supportive atmosphere
  • everyone is a learner and every opportunity a learning experience
  • all children should be confident to use their ‘pupil voice’ to influence their own learning
  • we lay the foundations for life by offering a positive rich experience for all of our pupils
  • we aspire for our children to achieve personal success and develop a love of learning
  • we have high expectations of everyone in school

Our Behaviours

What do our stakeholders really like about Ysgol Y Castell? - survey 2022

We continually strive to ensure the above behaviours are visible and apparent in our daily practise. These positive behaviours are a strength at Ysgol y Castell and secure our journey towards the school vision.

Going forward...

Adopting the requirements for the new Curriculum for Wales September 2022

Curriculum Considerations

The well-being of both pupils and staff is a priority at Ysgol y Castell.

We will consider all the essential components of the Curriculum for Wales framework to provide a broad and balanced curriculum that is relevant to our learners.

Overview of Curriculum for Wales
Our school curriculum reflects Wales, its cultural heritage and diversity, its languages and the values, histories and traditions of its communities and all of its people. We aim to instil in our learners’ passion and pride in themselves, their communities and their country, developing an understanding of their identities, landscapes and histories that come together to form their cynefin. The school’s aim is to allow our learners to not only develop a strong sense of their own identity and well-being, but to develop an understanding of others’ identities and make connections with people, places and histories both locally and elsewhere in Wales and across the world.
The four purposes are the guiding aspiration for our school curriculum model. The aim of our school curriculum is to support our learners to become: • ambitious, capable learners, ready to learn throughout their lives • enterprising, creative contributors, ready to play a full part in life and work • ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world • healthy, confident individuals, ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society
The four purposes are also underpinned by integral skills which will be developed within a wide range of learning and teaching. At the heart of these skills is the importance of our learners recognising, using and creating within a range of contexts that include financial, cultural, and social situations. • Creativity and innovation • Critical thinking and problem-solving • Personal effectiveness • Planning and organising
The mandatory cross-curricular skills of literacy, numeracy and digital competence are essential to all learning and the ability to unlock knowledge. They enable our learners to: • develop listening, reading, speaking and writing skills • be able to use numbers and solve problems in real-life situations • be confident users of a range of technologies to help them function and communicate effectively and make sense of the world.
Incorporated within our school curriculum there will be opportunities for learning and consideration of cross-cutting elements, which: • allow learners to consider local, national and international contexts • develop understanding of careers and work-related experiences • develop understanding of human rights education and diversity

Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) is a mandatory element of the new curriculum and will be included through the cross-cutting elements of the curriculum, focusing on the three strands: • Relationships and identity • Sexual health and well-being • Empowerment, safety and respect

Our school curriculum aims to be a successful curriculum, supported by effective teaching and learning, enabling our learners to make meaningful progress in skills and knowledge over time. This focuses on understanding what it means to make progress in a given Area or discipline and how learners should deepen and broaden their knowledge and understanding, skills and capacities, attributes and dispositions. Effective pedagogy is paramount to supporting progression. The 12 pedagogical principles will be selected by teachers to support progression and will be adapted to suit our learners’ needs.

Opportunities for learning will be channelled through the following Areas of Learning: • Expressive Arts • Humanities • Languages, Literacy & Communication • Mathematics & Numeracy • Science & Technology • Health & Well-Being

Consideration will be given to all the above as we design our school curriculum.

Religion, Values and Ethics (RVE)

Religion, Values and Ethics is a mandatory part of our Humanities curriculum and is built upon a series of concepts and big ideas. Our curriculum provides a range of disciplinary approaches to support learners to engage critically with a broad range of religious and non-religious philosophical convictions. Religion, Values and Ethics in our school will be designed giving regard to the Agreed Syllabus. Elements of RVE may be taught as a discrete lesson but may be included as part of a wider ‘topic’ where appropriate.

The RVE lens

  • Search for meaning and purpose How people respond to the deeper questions of life in order to understand the human condition.
  • The natural world and living things How and why people show concern and responsibility for the world and experience awe and wonder in nature.
  • Identity and belonging What makes us who we are as people, communities
  • Authority and influence How and why different types of authority influence people’s lives.
  • Relationships and responsibility How people live together and why developing healthy relationships is important.
  • Values and ethics How and why people make moral choices and how this influences their actions.
  • The journey of life What people experience as part of the journey of life and how these experiences are acknowledged.
Our school curriculum strives to cover all of the statements of what matters within each of the Areas, providing engagement with their key concepts in a developmentally appropriate way. These statements are therefore an essential part of our curriculum design. Teachers will use the statements of what matters to guide the development of curriculum content by using them to: • select experiences, knowledge and skills • understand how learning should support learners’ progression • allow learners to explore topics and activities through different lenses • help learners to make sense of a range of experiences, knowledge and skills, focused around the fundamentals of each Area
Curriculum content will always link back to the statements of what matters, supporting our learners to make sense of everything they learn throughout the continuum of learning. Teachers use a range of contexts, perspectives and topics to contribute towards learning within a statement. This enables our learners to develop a coherent framework of learning and an increasingly sophisticated understanding and application of those ideas or principles as they progress.
Five principles of progression underpin our learners’ progression across all Areas. The principles are as follows: • Increasing effectiveness • Increasing breadth and depth of knowledge • Deepening understanding of the ideas and disciplines within the Areas • Refinement and growing sophistication in the use and application of skills • Making connections and transferring learning into new contexts

Descriptions of learning provide the school curriculum with guidance on how learners should progress within each statement of what matters as they journey through the continuum of learning. These are arranged in the five progression steps which provide reference points for the pace of that progression. These expectations are expressed from the learner’s perspective and are framed broadly so that they can sustain learning over a series of years. They are not designed as stand-alone tasks, activities or assessment criteria. While the learning continuum is the same for each learner, the pace of progress through it may differ. As a result, the progression steps only broadly relate to age. They broadly correspond to expectations at ages 5, 8, 11, 14 and 16.

Descriptions of learning are designed to sustain learning over a period of years and this gives practitioners scope to use them to select content that provides both breadth and depth of learning.
Our school’s curriculum will enable our learners to develop competence and capability in their skills and, where there are opportunities, to extend and apply them across all Areas. These are skills that can then be transferred to the world of work, enabling our learners to adapt and thrive in the modern world.

Curriculum Model

Approaches to teaching:

Pupil Voice plays a key part in the planning for teaching and learning process. Learners are directly involved in determining what they want to learn and discover within their class topic work.

Opportunities will be given to enrich pupils' learning in a variety of ways. These may include *Outdoor Learning activities *Visitors to school *Visits out of school into the local community or further afield *Residential trips *Working with community groups *Collaborating with cluster schools, etc.

Assessment

Assessment will be an integral part of the learning process, with teachers working with learners to help identify their strengths, areas for development and next steps in learning. The overarching purpose of any assessment will be to support every learner to make progress. The three main roles played by assessment in supporting our learners’ progression will be:

  • Supporting individual learners on an ongoing, day to day basis
  • Identifying, capturing and reflecting on individual learner progress over time
  • Understanding group progress in order to reflect on practice

Tools that will support our assessment processes include: *Online Scheduled Assessments *CATS *PASS *Internal assessment activities *AfL approaches within the classroom *Pupil Progress Meetings *Monitoring cycles that include 'Learning Walks', 'Listening to Learners' and 'Book Monitoring'

Equal Opportunities

Our school is aware of the needs and circumstances of all our learners and our school curriculum considers equal opportunities through putting into place sufficient challenge, support and interventions or making reasonable adjustments. Our curriculum is designed to be inclusive of all learners - including those with Additional Learning Needs (ALN), More Able and Talented learners (MAT), pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL) and pupils with physical needs - allowing learners to progress along the same continuum of learning within each Area from ages 3 to 16. However, the pace at which learners progress along the continuum may differ – allowing for a diversion, repetition and reflection or acceleration as each learner’s thinking, knowledge and skills develop over time.

Reflection and Evaluation

How do we know that we have chosen the right or the right amount of key ingredients?

We are going to capture the effectiveness of our offer by evaluating if we have built in enough:

✓Pace

✓Depth

✓Breadth

✓Progression

We will use assessment of pupil progression for learning - not for judgement and accountability.

Created By
Joanne Bickerstaff
Appreciate

Credits:

Created with an image by weerapat1003 - "Mother and baby holding a young green plant together / Love and protect nature concept"