Our Learning
To see examples of our most recent learning, please have a look at our newsletters!
The intention of our curriculum is to create a culture of enquiry, curiosity and challenge that permeates everything we do.
Working in partnership with our families, we will help our children to be happy, confident, resilient, resourceful, reflective, responsive, independent and motivated; to use our shared values to make informed choices; to develop a life-long love of learning; to achieve highly and to the best of their ability; to feel valued.
We want to help them to ask great questions and think critically; teach them how to make things; how to speak confidently and listen actively; how to be aspirational and self-organising; how to be enquiring and curious and to discover things for themselves; how to protect their own (physical and mental) health and care for others; how to build positive relationships and contribute to their community; to value nature and care for the environment; how to engage actively and creatively; to set them up to live successfully.
To do all this, we provide a safe, secure and aspirational learning environment and the opportunity to participate in a range of stimulating experiences.
States of Being
States of being enable learners to focus on and/or combine powerful knowledge in different enquiries. Each knowledge-engaged state symbolises an aspect of the curriculum, helping learners to master both the know of and know how of a subject, not just remember it. For instance, we want our learners to be Scientists, not just learn about science. As learners get older, we help them cross-pollinate states. We want learners to discover for themselves that they can be an Author, Scientist, Geographer and Philosopher at the same time and that some adults combine these states to become Archaeologists, for instance. We want our learners to see the interconnection between what they are learning and how this knowledge is applied.
Each state of being is characterised to help the children understand what it means and to also challenge stereotypes around them. You will see them around our school buildings, on visual timetables, on school displays and our newsletters. We intend for our children to talk about being an Author or a Scientist rather than ‘doing’ Science or English.
Our enquiry curriculum enables our learners to become curious about the world around them. Using the Curious City Framework by Lighting Up Learning, we teach the National Curriculum through a content that is centered around the local area. This gives learners a valuable context to their learning that they can relate to and then gives them the tools to look outward towards the world around them. We find that this approach, streamlines, aligns and ensures everything we do is purposeful, progressive and immersive with local places, people and stories.
What is enquiry led learning?
In a nutshell, enquiry-led learning provokes learners with key questions too big to answer in one go, but not so conceptually large that they cannot understand. The purpose is to guide learners through a scaffolded process, where they engage, immerse, practice and finally challenge themselves to answer the big question with a piece of writing, performance or animation, for example. Through this process learners develop both the skills and knowledge they need in order to answer the big question, and through the practice section, they are given the time and space that they need to apply the skills and knowledge they have acquired.
The usual Author (English) and Mathematicians (Maths) teaching sequences continue. Details of these teaching sequences can be found in the Author-Reader, Author-Writer and Mathematician section.
National Curriculum subject objectives from Science, History, Geography, Art and Design, Design and Technology, Music are woven throughout enquiries. Some subjects (re-named using the States of Being) are taught discreetly, such as French, Physical Education, Religious Education and PSHE. Where possible, learning is still taught through an enquiry approach and links are made, but more often than not, they are stand-alone experiences.
Elm Enquiries Autumn Term 2025
Being an Artist - National Curriculum Coverage
Being an Engineer - National Curriculum Coverage
Being a Geographer - National Curriculum Coverage
Being a Historian - National Curriculum Coverage
Being a Musician - National Curriculum Coverage
Being a Scientist - National Curriculum Coverage
For more information on the curriculum please click on the link below
https://sites.google.com/lightinguplearning.com/hello/curriculum