The intent of the curriculum at Rowan Wood is to enable all children and young people to be active learners, moving towards independence, autonomy, control and choice, and that they learn to effectively communicate needs, wants, and opinions. The Curriculum Offer outlines how the school provides teaching and learning opportunities that are essential for the learning and development of all children and young people at Rowan Wood.

Our curriculum is based on National Curriculum Programmes of study for KS1-KS4 and includes all statutory curriculum requirements. It is carefully designed to meet the needs of all children and young people and reflects Rowan Wood’s key values. Our curriculum complies with the duties of the Equality Act 2010 and the SEND Code Practice 2014. It maximises cross curricular links, opportunities to practice and generalise key skills and a text-led approach to learning.

We have a carefully considered and sequenced approach to early reading.

This enables children and young people working at early development level to build essential pre-reading knowledge, understanding and skills. These include early visual, auditory and motor skills; focus and attention skills; early communication skills; and memory and sequencing skills.

For children and young people working at emergent concept level, foundations for reading are established through a clear focus on developing language comprehension and word recognition skills. This includes a focus on developing vocabulary, language conventions and background knowledge alongside phonological awareness. This is achieved through sharing high-quality stories and poems; learning a range of rhymes and simple poems; and activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending.

Children and young people working at basic concept and applying knowledge level who have established these pre-reading and foundations for reading skills are supported to become effective early readers. There is a continued focus on developing language comprehension skills alongside more formal decoding and automatic word recognition skills. We use the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds' systematic synthetic phonics programme to ensure children and young people build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. Alongside our phonics programme, we use carefully matched ‘Big Cat’ decodable reading books in order for children and young people to apply their phonics knowledge and be able to access high quality texts and read for pleasure later on.

Teaching of Religious Education (RE)

Whilst RE is not taught as a stand-alone subject at Rowan Wood, elements of the RE curriculum feature in strands of Time, People, Place and Culture (TPPC). These include strands of 'Community' and 'Cultures' which will contain reference to a range of world religions, cultures, world and religious rituals, festivals and celebrations. Whilst we do not teach about the content of religious teachings in depth, we do aim to teach children and young people about diversity, respect and tolerance of other religious beliefs. TPPC is taught through storytelling, use of props, artefacts, sensory and immersive experiences. Parents and carers have the right to withdraw their children and young people from sessions that link to RE. Please inform your child or young person's class teacher if you do not wish for them to partake in these elements of the TPPC curriculum. 

To find out more about our curriculum coverage and specific information such as the sixth form curriculum, refer to 'In This Section'.