The Curriculum at Hollywell

Inspiring young minds to unlock their potential to grow

This section of our website is focused on our Curriculum and provides an overview of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Framework and the Curriculum offer for children in Years 1 to 6. The Curriculum is all the planned activities that the school organises in order to promote learning, personal growth and development. Please see the attached documents about how we teach all subjects at Hollywell Primary School. If you would like further information about our curriculum please contact the school.

Curriculum Intent

Our curriculum has been designed to inspire by providing an enriching and challenging range of experiences which extend opportunity, develop independence and inspire children through the world in which they live. We aim to build resilience and encourage a positive mind-set amongst our children as it is often through mistakes we learn the most.

We believe that to do this, our curriculum should develop skills and knowledge; it should, produce adventurers, creators, well-balanced individuals and, above all, it should help our children to understand what it means to be a global citizen.

We also believe that children learn through first hand experiences and so we plan curriculum enrichment activities through our GROWTH enrichment project and through a planned sequence of educational visits, visitors into school and a wealth of wider curriculum activities to develop a deep love of learning.

Curriculum Rationale

Our curriculum driver is inspiration. We want the children at Hollywell to be inspired by people, places and the world in which we live in now and in the past. Our whole school curriculum map has been produced following careful consideration of where to position the experiences, skills, and knowledge we believe our children need, in order to be successful on their learning journeys.

Our curriculum is designed to sequence knowledge and a progressive development of skills.  Inspiration is our central curriculum driver but alongside this we have selected three main pathways which weave throughout our curriculum and build the children's knowledge base over time. These learning pathways build a schema to connect & support links in learning & aid long-term memory retention. These small stepping stones accumulate in UKS2. These are: 

Learning Pathways

Evolution - the gradual development of something over time

Environmental - the natural world, human impact on the planet and promoting its protection 

Legacies - Learning from the past and how it impacts on the present 

Throughout school we use a sequential connected learning approach, identifying key concepts that are drawn out to allow different areas of the curriculum, where possible, to be threaded together and taught as projects. We refer to these as interconnected subjects.  Each sequence is carefully thought through to maximise links between subjects and thus maintain the integrity of our curriculum coverage, continuity of skills development and the rich and varied experiences we expect to provide for all pupils. Alongside this, some areas of the curriculum are taught discretely, such as RE, PE, maths etc. The progression of our curriculum is founded in the National Curriculum. 

Each sequence is mostly planned over a term in Years 1 - 6 and a half term in EYFS.  Working in this manner allows us to explore areas of the curriculum in depth as the children’s knowledge base increases alongside the development of their skills.

Core Skills

At Hollywell we value the acquisition of core skills as we see these as the scaffolding for all learning. These skills are vital for enabling all pupils to access the whole curriculum and to enhance future economic and social wellbeing.

Reading

Reading is given a high priority in our curriculum, as it is the ability to read and understand which opens up learning for children. Quality texts are woven into our curriculum design as is vocabulary acquisition as we believe the development of children’s vocabulary is a vital tool in learning and understanding the full curriculum. Alongside this we aim to foster a ‘love’ of reading through daily reading for pleasure sessions. 

You can view our curriculum content and our approach to each individual subject below.

GROWTH Enrichment 

An integral part of the curriculum at Hollywell is our GROWTH enrichment project. This is a bespoke personal development programme which is entwined throughout our curriculum to specifically develop our learning values of: Growing, Resilience, Open-Minded, Wonder, Teamwork, Happiness

GROWTH Enrichment starts in EYFS and develops through 4 strands of personal development learning that continue through the curriculum into Y6. These strands are:

1. The Great Outdoors

2. A Sporting Difference

3. Healthy Body and Mind

4. Community Action

Further information can be found here

Whole School Curriculum Overview Map 

Please find below our whole school curriculum overview map.  This will give you an outline of provision for the year.

You can find out more about what each class is learning about by visiting the our classes section of our website.