Curriculum Implementation and Impact

Western House Academy - where every opportunity shapes a life

The Implementation of the Curriculum at WHA

Every subject in the curriculum offered at WHA stands on four broad principles; values, knowledge, equality and  experience. These underpin every decision teachers make in order to teach effectively. We promote our values in every aspect of the curriculum and encourage collaborative work as well as individual scholarships. The knowledge taught is based upon the National Curriculum and the knowledge experiences and skills lower down the school feed into the subjects and units in the upper school, ensuring progress and a wealth of knowledge for the children to draw upon as they meet new challenges and learning. Children have meaningful experiences in their learning, the breadth of the curriculum is designed, so no subject is left out and every subject has integrity.

We have carefully constructed a curriculum that enables us to focus on one humanities subject each half term, giving it the integrity it needs. Each unit has designated Tiered Vocabulary that the children learn and use throughout the term. The vocabulary children are exposed to sees words moving from tier 3 to tier 1 as the child moves through the school. 

Please see the curriculum overviews for each year group. 

The Impact of our Curriculum

At Western House Academy (WHA) our aim is to reflect and build on the strengths of the rich diversity of the communities we serve as a vibrant framework in which children:

• discover a love of learning that gives them the momentum to succeed
• become academically, digitally, and socially confident
• make ambitious progress at every stage, whatever their background or circumstance

We measure the impact of our curriculum through:

• Use of formative and summative assessments to assess the standards our pupils are meeting in their learning
• Measuring how much knowledge pupils have acquired through regular low-stakes quizzing
• Regular opportunities for pupil voice so that our pupils can articulate what they have learnt and what knowledge they have remembered over time
• Revisiting our curriculum vocabulary at the end of each half term to demonstrate how much new vocabulary was learnt and applied
• Celebrations of success to share and reward progress across a range of subjects