Welcome to our wider curriculum page. At Shakespeare, we provide all of our pupils with a rich and varied curriculum that helps them to gain a greater understanding of the world in which they live. 

For a number of years, we followed a curriculum that was created and crafted by our trust. This curriculum was successful and was praised in numerous OFSTED inspections across the trust. However, collectively we wanted something better. After a robust search and seeing curriculums in practice across the country, we selected United Learning because it is a deliberately and purposefully sequenced curriculum. It is written by experts and therefore enables our teachers to deliver expert lessons. The curriculum is highly ambitious and reaches beyond the National Curriculum. The package, which United Learning provides, allows teachers and leaders to collaborate with curriculum designers who are continuously reviewing and analysing the curriculum at an expert level – it never stands still and is continuously improved and adapted.

Specifically, as a school, selecting an ambitious curriculum which reaches beyond the National Curriculum was exceptionally important. It is important that we spark our children's curiosity, yield great knowledge and encourage a love of learning, which directly mirrors the six core principles of United Learning: entitlement, coherence, mastery, adaptability, representation and education with character.

We follow the United Learning whilst delivering History, Geography, Religion and Worldviews, Art and Design, Design and Technology and Science. 

What would a typical lesson look like whilst delivering wider curriculum?

Each lesson not only closely follows the structure of United Learning but reflects our own Teaching and Learning policy. In our session, every lesson will begin with reviewing of the Graphic Organiser. This tool provides the opportunity to

recap previous knowledge but also introduce knowledge which will be taught in that session through a modelled approach. Within the Graphic Organiser, we will review previously taught vocabulary and model new vocabulary. The lesson then moves to a ‘review’ where an element of previous learning within the Unit will be recapped and then into an I Do, We Do, You Do approach (which is in line with United Learning but also a core function of our own Teaching and Learning policy).

The I Do section allows knowledge and skills to be clearly shared, explained and modelled in expert fashion by the teacher. The We Do, allows for collaboration and for the learners to begin to use the knowledge in a scaffolded and supported way. You may see deliberate, timed partner talk, shared activities of mini-whiteboards to allow for assessment for learning and emphasis on oracy for sharing ideas. As the lesson progresses from We Do to You Do, teachers will use hinge questioning to check for understanding and accordingly respond and react with specific scaffold, adaptions and personalistion. The You Do section allows learners to apply their new knowledge independently. Scaffolds and adaptions provided will ensure all learners are challenged and supported. At the end of the lesson, a review of the Graphic Organiser and vocabulary allows the teacher to plug and close gaps. The review of the session ensure the opening section and modelling of new knowledge and vocabulary is meaningful and purposeful.