Our Curriculum 

 This section provides an overview of the curriculum at Ridgeway.

Curriculum Drivers 

The Ridgeway Primary Academy curriculum is based on knowledge, skills and experiences. It has been carefully designed to be real, relevant and rich.  

Everything we do is underpinned by the following curriculum drivers: 

• Proud – Proud of who we are 
• Unique – Celebrating our unique place in the world 
• Ambitious – Ambitious in our dreams 

Proud 

We will strive to ensure that every child knows their own self-worth and believes they can achieve.  Our curriculum supports children to understand their own strengths and character so that they become confident, resilient, lifelong learners. 

Unique 

Children will learn about the rights and responsibilities of themselves and others, learning to respect and appreciate everyone’s place in the local community and the wider world. 

Ambitious 

Our curriculum empowers children to ‘dream big’ by providing opportunities and experiences which inspire them to believe in the possibilities here and beyond. 

At Ridgeway we aim to provide a broad and balanced curriculum which meets the needs of Ridgeway pupils. We have designed our own curriculum to ensure that children who attend Ridgeway enjoy and achieve. Our curriculum upholds the fundamental core values of democracy, rule of law, liberty and tolerance of all faiths and beliefs.  We also feel our curriculum prepares children for the future and gives them the skills and knowledge to succeed not only in the rest of their educational journey, but far beyond this. 

Our main priority is for children to excel and make as much progress in the core areas of the curriculum as possible.  We base much of our planning on basic skills, giving children the opportunity to progress from a solid base. We teach the new National Curriculum for all elements of Maths and English.

We have taken the National Curriculum and developed key skills and knowledge from this into a series of subject specific themes. Each subject theme will include hands on activities, memorable moments and will have a great focus on subject specific knowledge and skills. Each subject theme has a knowledge organiser for parents relating to the key knowledge and information being taught. 

At Ridgeway, we understand the importance of developing the whole child and have created our Farm Schools Curriculum, based on strengthening four important areas: teamwork; resilience and self-regulation; emotional expression; and choice and independence. These skills are taught through a spiral curriculum that all children are engaged with every year on our two farm sites, here at Ridgeway and at Jarrow Hall. This unique offer is key in helping us meet the personal, social and emotional needs of our children.

Phonics is taught through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds throughout the school. We have reading books which we use to aid the teaching of reading, and a packed full library to supplement our reading and other curriculum areas. Children will be taught French in Key Stage 2.