The Curriculum at The Ridgeway

We are passing on the discoveries and work of the previous generations to the next, whilst empowering pupils to add to this body of knowledge in the future.

At The Ridgeway we understand that without a well-sequenced curriculum, pupils will not develop their knowledge of the world systematically over time. 

Over the last year we have invested a significant amount of time in developing a knowledge-rich curriculum to give our pupils access to the very best curriculum content. This ensures that pupils secure a solid base to build on as they move through school and into Key Stage 3 and beyond. Our curriculum is ambitious and goes above and beyond the requirements laid out in the national curriculum. 

The Ridgeway curriculum is designed with knowledge at its heart to ensure that children develop a strong vocabulary base and an extensive understanding of the world.  The curriculum promotes long-term learning and we believe that progress means knowing more and remembering more.  As pupils learn the content of the curriculum they are making progress. We have developed a curriculum built on current research regarding how memory works to ensure that children not only have access to 'the best that has been thought and said' but are taught this in a way that ensures children can remember the curriculum content in future years. 

We make use of knowledge organisers to ensure children know exactly which information is expected to be learned over the course of their study in a particular subject. One of the central aims of the curriculum is to ensure that our pupils are both "interesting and interested". We want them to be 'interesting' to talk to, because they know a great deal about the world and 'interested' in finding out more.  We believe that knowledge breeds curiosity - as pupils learn more about the world they become more curious. It is very difficult to be curious about something that you don't know anything about. We understand that knowledge is 'sticky', in other words, the more pupils know, the easier it is for them to know more.   As a result, we carefully check and activate prior knowledge to ensure our pupils are able to understand and remember new things they are learning.

Three key elements that run through The Ridgeway curriculum ensure that pupils will be:

• knowledgeable and inquisitive;
• powerful communicators;
• successful citizens.

Acquisition of 'powerful knowledge' is at the heart of the curriculum
This means that pupils learn knowledge which empowers them to not only understand the world around them but to understand how each subject discipline works in order to extend this knowledge of the world.

Knowledge is specified in fine detail
This means that we set out very precisely what pupils will know and be able to do in each subject. This means that we don't leave anything to chance. If we want pupils to know a specific piece of knowledge we specify when and how this is learned over time.

Knowledge is acquired in long-term memory
This means that we expect all pupils to remember their learning into the future. We have planned the curriculum so that there are many chances for pupils to review what they have already learned and secure it in their memories.

Knowledge is carefully sequenced over time
This means that we have thought carefully about the most effective order to learn new curriculum content in.  We have planned the curriculum so that each unit of work in a subject, builds directly on what has been learned before. This helps pupils understand and remember their learning more effectively.

Knowledge is organised into subject disciplines and is derived from discourse within subject communities
This means that from KS1 we teach individual subjects such as History, Geography, Science, Computing and Art. We treat each subject separately so that pupils have a very clear understanding of what is important about each subject and that their knowledge and skills progress systematically over time in each area of the curriculum. We work closely with subject experts and subject associations to ensure that what we choose to include in our curriculum is the very best that it can be.

Our Accessibility Plan can be found here.

Our curriculum is based on the National Curriculum which can be found below.