Joydens Wood Junior School
Curriculum Experience Overview at Joydens Wood Junior School
What is the Experience Curriculum at JWJS?
Our vision is to provide inspirational learning experiences that will ignite sparks within the children and enable them to develop as confident, articulate and happy individuals who achieve academic excellence. We have taken great care to design our curriculum to achieve our vision and ensure that our values underpin it. The curriculum is all the planned activities that we organise in order to promote learning, personal growth and development. It includes not only the formal requirements of the National Curriculum, but also the range of extra-curricular activities that the school organises in order to enrich the experiences of the children at Joydens Wood Junior School. It also includes the ‘hidden curriculum’, or what the children learn from the way they are treated and expected to behave.
Joydens Wood Junior School’s curriculum meets the requirements of the 2014 National Curriculum and is designed to reflect the needs of our school and its community. We redesigned our curriculum in 2019 to become an Experience Curriculum. We teach the children through a number of experiences over the year which develop the children’s natural
inquisitiveness and excitement. We aim to involve the local community in as many experiences as possible with parents/grandparents etc. involved in tea parties, art
exhibitions and documentary presentations. Our Experience Curriculum has been designed in a way that reflects our own agreed pedagogy. Our reasons and beliefs for its design include:
- We believe it reflects our cultural capital of providing our pupils learning opportunities that develop their resilience and hook them into their learning.
- It equips pupils with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. Our understanding of ‘knowledge and cultural capital’ is derived from the following wording in the national curriculum: ‘It is the essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing them to the best that has been thought and said and helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.’
- We plan our experiences in a way that we feel gives the children a fluid curriculum that alternates between different areas of the National Curriculum. We do not
believe in having a set pattern per term (e.g.: science, history, geography, science, geography, history, etc.) - We believe by having a set time allocated for each experience ensures that our children are stimulated and engaged with their learning and school life.
- We want our children to be motivated and excited about coming to school as well as feeling that they belong here.
- We also want our teachers to feel empowered and excited with the range of topics and skills they are sharing with our children. We want them to take ownership and feel that what we are teaching does engage the children.
- By planning our curriculum in this manner, we believe our children will be able to link learning across the experiences and build upon knowledge and skills they have gained in previous learning opportunities.
- We also aim to ensure that skills taught are transferable across all areas of school life and that our curriculum reduces barriers to learning so all children are included to enjoy it.
Click below to see the plans of our Experience Curriculum for each year group: