At Elmwood Juniors, we have designed a unique curriculum with the intention to inspire children to love learning and to be excited about what they will learn and achieve every day. The curriculum is deliberately designed and built by our teachers to be creative, interesting, relevant and fun. The curriculum is a carefully designed and planned learning journey throughout the year with interesting cross curricular links and themes. Each learning unit will have unique Entry (a hook into the learning) and Exit points (a demonstration by the children of their learning with purpose). The curriculum is ambitious and cross curricular so that children have opportunities to extend their interests through enquiry learning. Elmwood curriculum is inclusive and international within its focus to reflect the multicultural nature of the school community. Our diversity is seen as a fantastic learning opportunity and is reflected in the content of our curriculum, from authors used to historical events studied.

The Elmwood curriculum has three fundamental principles:

1. An amazing learning experience – That learning is experiential, memorable and fun. The curriculum is designed by Elmwood teachers for Elmwood children. The curriculum is brilliantly sequenced and planned so that a creative broad balanced curriculum is designed for the unique 4 year Elmwood learning journey. Each year and term is distinctive in its learning journey to spark a fascination and a delight in learning. Every lesson counts. We believe that learning experiences should be unforgettable. This involves exciting learning moments that children will never forget. Gamification within lessons is developed to spark fun and enjoyment.

2. High quality teaching (Excellent pedagogy). At Elmwood we believe that the individual teaching delivery of each lesson should be of high quality.  Our passionate and dedicated staff are highly skilled with a focus on excellence in pedagogy. The skill of high quality teaching is both developed and celebrated. Our teachers adopt the Hensei approach to their practice whereby teachers are constantly looking to develop and improve classroom practice so that Elmwood children receive the very best teaching.

Features of high quality teaching include:

• Staff have high expectation of themselves and all of the children
• Teachers impart knowledge accurately and with enthusiasm
• Teachers take into account prior knowledge and build this into all lessons
• Lesson objectives are in the form of questions so that children take responsibility for their learning and can self assess progress
• There are high levels of children interaction with a variety of techniques to increase engagement
• The classroom is designed and encourages learning
• Excellent use of teacher questioning, modelling and clear explanations
• Teachers encourage motivation and curiosity in every lesson to increase learning
• Regular use of encouragement and praise to motivate and develop confidence

3. Amazing learning character. To enable an excellent learning culture everything we do at Elmwood is underpinned by the Elmwood 10 values. These values enable children to become confident learners though such values as resilience, curiosity, responsibility and being team players. We believe these values are skills to be learnt within themselves and will prepare the children for their future in 10 to 20 years time.