Our curriculum structure

At Warden House, we recognise that the process of designing a school curriculum is never complete. Our curriculum is continuously evolving and is designed to best support the needs of the pupils within our school.

Our teachers and subject leaders work diligently using the structure below to ensure that there is a clear rationale and process behind the planning and delivery of all subjects:

Blocking

By blocking the delivery of subject content for a many of our foundation subjects and science, we can limit the risk of what is known as cognitive overload - the process where an individual's working memory is overloaded and unable to process new information effectively due to the amount of information it is being required to process.

At Warden House, we recognise that cognitive overload could be a key barrier to preventing the full learning of subject content for our children if we expect them to continuously process content from 11 different subjects every single week.

We recognise that if we can limit the amount of new information from different subjects that the children have to hold in their short-term memory then this will have obvious benefits. This approach is grounded in careful research and neuroscience.

We do this whilst also ensuring the sequence of learning is carefully spaced will allow children to know more and remember more over time.

We also recognise that some foundations subjects are best taught on a weekly basis to allow for the ongoing continuity of learning. Subjects such as PE, music, primary languages and PSHE are not blocked to allow for knowledge to build steadily over time.

Spaced Learning

Each blocked unit is spaced and sequenced with links identified horizontally (within year groups and across subjects) and vertically (through year groups, linking to prior learning). This can be seen in our year group subject overviews page.

This enables us to set the learning context with greater clarity, we as teachers, will know what has been covered and when.

Continuous Provision

Following on from the model used in EYFS, at Warden House we use a continuous provision model across KS1 in order to successfully deliver our curriculum to younger children. This model is based on careful research from both the UK and from overseas and based on what evidence tells us helps our younger children learn best.

Please click here to view more information about this and how this is structured at Warden House.