At Holywell Primary we believe in the concept of lifelong learning and in the idea that both adults and pupils learn new things together.  At Holywell Primary learning is defined as:  The process of acquiring the essential Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills and Habits required for deep understanding. 

We believe learning should be engaging, creative and personalised and a rewarding and enjoyable experience for all.  Teaching and learning at Holywell is focused on developing rich dialogue between teachers and pupils, pupils and their peers and within the wider school community.  We understand everyone learns in different ways and seek to plan lessons and topics which will enable children to be active participants in their learning.

Through a knowledge and skills-based approach to learning we encourage children to take responsibility for their own learning, to be involved as far as possible in reviewing what strategies and tools help to learn and how well they have mastered their learning.  We achieve this by developing a curriculum that offers children the opportunity to develop key thinking skills and learning habits on a daily basis.

Learning at Holywell

We believe people learn best in different ways.  At Holywell, we provide a rich and varied learning environment which allows all pupils to develop their skills and abilities to their full potential.

Through our teaching, we aim to:

• enable pupils to become confident, resourceful, enquiring and independent learners;
• foster pupils self-esteem and help them to build positive relationships with other people;
• develop pupils self-respect, encourage them to understand the ideas, attitudes and values of others, and teach them to respect other people's feelings;
• show respect for a diverse range of cultures and, in so doing, to promote positive attitudes towards other people;
• enable pupils to understand their community, and help them feel valued as part of it;
• help pupils grow into reliable, independent and positive citizens.

Provision is designed to advance understanding and knowledge gradually through a key stage.  Lessons are not an event in themselves.  They are part of the process of learning and therefore we do not expect pupils to complete learning within a lesson.  Many lessons will carry on over several days or even weeks until a pupil is showing the required degree of understanding. 

Key learning objectives define outcomes and focus teaching. They help to clarify, organise and prioritise learning.  The key learning is one of the measurable stages a learner will go through as part of the process of learning in order to advance and deepen their understanding. 

Planning our curriculum

Our learning starts with the aims and objectives of the National Curriculum and we create learning opportunities by teaching through thematic topics.  Our curriculum is designed to enable all pupils to experience a wide breadth of study and have, by the end of each key stage, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in the next stage of their learning, and beyond.

We know learning is a change to Long term memory and progress is an ongoing process of knowing more and remembering more.  Through the effective delivery of a coherently planned and sequenced curriculum which shows opportunities to deliberately practise activities that over time embed and deepen knowledge, our children will be able to make connections between topics and build a conceptual understanding.

Pillars & Threads

To ensure children know and remember more we have designed a curriculum which explicitly teaches the pillars of substantive knowledge through a range of subject-specific disciplinary knowledge threads. These are evident in our subject pages.