Curriculum Projects

Whenever possible we like to collaborate with others to further our aims for the curriculum and to enrich the experiences available for both children and staff.  Please explore this page to see what we have been up to.

The PLACE project

Our school is one of several in Cumbria that are part of this two year project which is exploring and creating place-based paths to learning.  This is perfectly aligned to our aim for our curriculum to be more specific to our place and based on experiential learning.

The project is co-funded by Erasmus+ and is a collaboration between four partners: Cumbria Development Education Centre (CDEC), Development Education in Dorset (DEED), the Centre for Environmental Education and Ethics - Czech Republic (SEVER) and the SOSNA Eco Centre in Slovakia.

Core pathways for learning include therapeutic gardening, philosophy for children (P4C), community activism and questing.

Miss Hamblet and Mrs Dawson are leading on our project to develop a therapeutic garden area in Phoenix Park next to the school grounds.  The Year 2 children have been working hard in school time and in an after school club to make this happen and we are being supported by several members of the local community.

In May 2022, Miss Hamblet and Mr Norman were able to visit the SOSNA centre in Slovakia and spent time learning from and sharing their learning with teachers and trainers from all three countries involved.

Wigton Infant's Place Project

Our Place Project is to develop a Therapeutic Garden in our locality. The local council donated a piece of land in Phoenix Park to us and we have been working so hard to create a special place. We want members of the community to be able to use our garden and for it to be a place where people can relax and connect to nature. We designed what our ideal garden would look like and what features we would like there to be including a herbal garden, sensory path and wooden archway. We are so excited to continue working on this project!

The WELL project

Western Excellence in Leadership and Learning (WELL) is an evidence informed, transformational education project, made possible through Sellafield Ltd, NDA and the commitment of schools across West Cumbria.  The aim of the project is to sustainably improve educational outcomes for all young people in West Cumbria, particularly those facing disadvantage.  Alongside a range of training and development work made possible by WELL our school has chosen to allocate an annual grant to an innovative project designed to enhance social,  emotional and communication learning for a targeted group of children (consisting of approximately 25% of our Year 1 and Year 2 children).  The core activity for this project is regular visits to local nature-rich sites with staff trained in Forest School and Social and Emotional learning.

So far we have carried out around 15 visits with our children to sites including Campfield Marsh, Finglandrigg Wood, Drumburgh Moss and Wolsty Banks.  We have volunteered to work with the University of Nottingham and the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE) to explore teacher-led action research and to support evaluation of the whole WELL project.  So far we are delighted with the response from the children and the parents that we have surveyed.