Curriculum
At Lovelace Primary School we aim to give our pupils an excellent education: offering them a curriculum which is exciting, memorable and relevant and inspires them to be successful, lifelong learners who become confident, curious and creative thinkers. We want our children to have a strong foundation of knowledge, skills and understanding which they can apply to their everyday life to become responsible citizens who have choices and make valued contributions to their community and beyond. Our curriculum is underpinned and inspired by our whole school vision ‘Learning together, achieving forever’.
'The school’s provision for personal development is well considered. The school aims for pupils to be responsible, resilient citizens. It provides opportunities for pupils to show these qualities.' OFSTED 2024
Our curriculum design is guided by our 7 core curriculum values – we call this our Curriculum Guarantee:
Our Curriculum Guarantee will ensure that our curriculum will:
- Be inclusive and develop the whole child and see each child as an individual – nurturing, motivating and challenging every pupil, in every lesson, every day.
- Have the development of the essential skills of reading, writing, oracy (spoken language and vocabulary acquisition) and mathematics at its heart
- Be underpinned by assessments which inform next steps and curriculum adaptations and celebrate progress and achievement
- Be broad and balanced and be underpinned by a clear progression in knowledge, skills and understanding so that the children will know more, remember more and be able to do more as they progress through the school.
- Support the children in ‘learning to learn’ – explicitly teaching memory skills and encouraging self evaluation and reflection
- Make meaningful links and connections between areas of knowledge and understanding both across the curriculum and into the wider world: preparing children for the diversity and richness of our global society.
- Recognise the context of our children as learners: offering them a wealth of first hand ‘Wow experiences’ which ensure that they build valuable cultural capital and are prepared for life beyond school. We do this through planning enrichment activities: Nurture groups; educational visits; fieldwork; grounds days; residential trips; visiting authors, artists and poets; Inspiration Days; cooking projects; gardening; theme days; performances; sporting competitions; fundraising and special events.
We have selected Kapow Primary curriculum resources to support the delivery of our wider curriculum because it reflects our 7 core values, covers the National Curriculum detailing a clear progression in knowledge and skills, is underpinned by pre and post topic assessments and can be easily adapted to meet the needs of our community. A particular strength of this resource is that the schemes of work focus on both Substantive knowledge (e.g. subject specific knowledge and conceptual understanding) and Disciplinary Knowledge (e.g. learning to think and behave like a scientist, historian or geographer). The resource also has a strong emphasis on interactive, practical learning both inside the classroom and outside, across the wider environment, both locally and beyond.
From November 2024 our teachers will be introducing Kapow materials to support their teaching in Science, Geography/History and Art/DT in Reception, KS1 and KS2. Reception will be sampling a range of these activities to support direct teaching during carpet time and during continuous provision. This implementation will be a rolling program over the academic year. When customising these resources, our teachers will be guided by our 7 core curriculum values. All adaptations of the Kapow materials will reflect ‘Using Kapow – The Lovelace Way’ expectations which are currently being drafted to ensure continuity of expectation and provision across the school.
Music and PE are currently taught by specialist teachers who have designed their own curriculums. See PE and Music ‘The Lovelace Way’ for more information on this:
Organisation and implementation
Each Kapow subject is made up Units. Each Unit is made up of between 4-6 lessons which are carefully designed to cover the National Curriculum and ensure progression and coverage across each subject’s curriculum. Subjects are either taught weekly (Science, music, PE, PSHE,computing, RE and French) or as two-three week topic blocks to enable a deeper focus and fuller immersion in learning opportunities (Geography, History, Art, DT).
During this curriculum transition period each subject leader will be adapting the Kapow Intent, Implementation and Impact statements for their subjects to reflect subject specific principles and how they have been adapted to reflect our Lovelace community, delivering ‘Kapow – The Lovelace Way’. These will include examples of Knowledge Organisers and Long Term Planning Overviews. These documents will be posted in January 2025 following the whole school launch.
Residential Trips and Educational Visits
At Lovelace we pride ourselves on bringing the curriculum to life through educational visits and experience days. We try to fully exploit the wonderful resources that are available to us in our locality and in London, which is easily accessible by train.
These trips and experiences are constantly being reviewed and updated to ensure that they are inclusive and address the needs of each cohort and the topics they are studying.
101 Lovelace Learning Enrichment Experiences:
At Lovelace we have also developed 101 Lovelace Learning Enrichment Experiences for pupils to ‘grow, explore, discover’ as they progress through the school. These are integral to the curriculum offer for each year group. They enable pupils to recall knowledge covered in the wider curriculum and apply it to memorable, real life experiences. The 101 experiences are also designed to contribute to each child’s personal development, broadening their life skills and experience of Cultural Capital.
See examples below for Early Years / Years 1 and 2/ Years 3 and 4/ Years 5 and 6.
Sporting Achievements:
In addition to the academic achievements and offering 101 Lovelace Learning Enrichment Experiences we also pride ourselves in offering a wide range of competitive sporting opportunities. We believe that participation in sports enriches the curriculum we offer. It provides a vital opportunity to challenge our children’s physical abilities whilst also teaching them social skills, giving them the opportunity to represent their school in a wider context. We are keen to show the children how to win and lose with grace and dignity. The school is currently top of the Borough League for Athletics and will be representing Kingston at the London Games 2025. Visit our PE page for further detail
Existing Curriculum Overviews 2024 – these are currently being amended to reflect the transition to the Kapow schemes of work.
Year 1 Group Curriculum Overview
Year 2 Group Curriculum Overview
Year 3 Group Curriculum Overview
Year 4 Group Curriculum Overview
Year 5 Group Curriculum Overview
Year 6 Group Curriculum Overview