Curriculum 

To find out more about our curriculum in detail explore our curriculum pages. 

To find out about current topics and class information visit phase pages. 

INTENT

Our curriculum is based on the National Curriculum Guidance 2014 and Early Years Statutory Framework 2021.  It is designed to give pupils appropriate opportunities to develop as confident, responsible citizens who are active members of their faith and local communities.

It provides a coherent, structured, academic curriculum that leads to sustained mastery for all and a greater depth of understanding for those who are capable.

We have developed three curriculum drivers that shape our curriculum, bring about the aims and values (Joy, Courage, Justice)  of the school and respond to the particular needs of the community.

Cultural Capital: Is the background knowledge of the world pupils need to infer meaning and further steward a continued acquisition of knowledge of subjects taught.  It includes vocabulary and experiences, which in turn helps pupils to build aspirations and know available possibilities in their future lives.

Collaboration: Helps pupils to know how and when to work on their own, with a partner, small group or larger group.  This prepares them to be effective learners throughout their school journey and beyond.

Curiosity:  Encouraging children to be inquisitive and questioning and to be resourceful and independent in their learning; providing opportunities for independent thinking and application of skills and supporting children as they take risks.  This requires perseverance and improvement through evaluation and so we nurture problem solvers, value self-expression and enable ‘craftsmanship’.

The three drivers underpin the curriculum and planning documents show:

1. A clear list of breadth of topics that will be covered.  This ensures that each teacher has clarity as to what opportunities to offer and curriculum coverage.  We run a two year programme in most year groups.
2. The “threshold concepts” children should understand. These are chosen to build conceptual understanding and are repeated many times in each topic.
3. Criteria for progression within the threshold concepts.  These are split into milestones. The milestone defines the standards for the threshold concepts.
4. Criteria for depth of understanding.  The depth at which the knowledge is being taught.

Implementation

Our curriculum design is based on evidence from cognitive science.  It is underpinned by three main principles:

1. Learning is most effective with spaced repetition.  This means that threshold concepts are revisited in each milestone and across each phone on more than one occasion.
2. Interleaving can be used to help pupils discriminate between topics and aids long-term retention. This means that some knowledge will be taught in parallel with other knowledge and will be built into the continuous provision both indoors and out.
3. Retrieval of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength.  This means that things the children know well are revisited and extended. 

In addition to the three principals, we understand that learning is invisible in the short-term and that sustained mastery takes time.  As a result we expect the learning in Year 1, 3 and 5 to focus on developing fundamental foundations for later application.

Impact

The impact of curriculum is that by the end of each milestone, the vast majority of pupils  have sustained mastery of this content.  This means they are able to remember what they have learned and are fluent in it. Some pupils will have a greater depth of understanding.

We track carefully to ensure pupils are on track to reach expectations of our curriculum and  know that nothing is learned unless it rests in a pupils’ long-term memory.  This does not happen and cannot be assessed in the short term.  Therefore, we ask three main assessment questions:

1. How well are the pupils coping with the curriculum content?
2. Are they on track to meet end of milestone expectations?
3. How well are they retaining previously taught content?