Our curriculum intent

At Riverside Academy, we are passionate about ensuring that all children are provided with learning opportunities that enable them to reach high standards across all areas of the curriculum. Our bespoke curriculum is tailored on the simple belief that every child deserves the best opportunities that we can provide. We strive to improve the life chances for our children by setting high expectations and championing each individual’s aspirations.

Our Intent is to deliver a fun and enjoyable curriculum which provides exceptional learning opportunities. It is tailored to the needs of our children. Our curriculum provides memorable experiences to raise aspirations and broaden knowledge. It fosters a love of reading and develops a rich and varied vocabulary.

Implementation

Our curriculum develops children’s life skills which will allow them to excel beyond the classroom and in later life. It highlights the importance of being respectful to our community, the people around us and develops our children to be model citizens. Through our 11B411 challenges, we learn about the importance of good deeds, bringing the community together, conquering fears and trying new things.

Through real life experiences and educational visits for all of our children, we enrich the knowledge and understanding that has taken place in school. We provide experiences that may not be possible for the children to have outside of our school such as: visiting France, taking a trip to the seaside and horse riding.

Our curriculum fosters a love of reading whereby children use reading as a driver to discover more about the world past and present. Our children develop their knowledge of reading in all subjects to support their acquisition of knowledge. This is taught through English, comprehension and foundation subject lessons. Children are encouraged use reading to seek out more information and lead their own learning.  

Vocabulary is given high profile from EYFS onwards. Through a vocabulary rich environment, children are encouraged to develop their vocabulary choices which allows them to develop key concepts across different curriculum areas. Children’s responses to learning is evident throughout our learning environment and we use looking for learning questions which the children respond to. Communicating using subject specific vocabulary is a key concept that runs throughout all year groups which is built upon from previous knowledge.

Through all our curriculum areas, children are faced with problem solving and reasoning, which allows them to demonstrate, develop and showcase resilience. Tackling ambitious challenges, whether successful or not, are celebrated throughout school.

We are proud to be part of our local community and we use the local environment, where possible, to develop our children’s understanding of locality, cultural diversity and local history. We work closely with members of our community to support us with this. We value the relationships that we have with our parents and carers and host family meals and curriculum workshops. Our curriculum workshops are designed to allow our parents and carers to participate in their child’s learning and the children enjoy sharing their learning and working alongside their families.

Impact

The impact can be seen in the sustained achievement and progress of pupils at the end of each key stage over a number of years.  Children are engaged, inspired and motivated to be the best that they can be. They deepen their  knowledge and skills over time and develop the learning dispositions needed be successful and confident individuals. Children leave Riverside well prepared for the next stage of their education.