Our curriculum's aim is to inspire, nurture and grow the hearts and minds of today to build the communities of tomorrow.
Our curriculum takes its inspiration from, and is a response to, the needs of our community, our ambitions as a school and the requirements of the National Curriculum. We aim to provide a challenging, creative and adventurous curriculum.
We have the highest possible expectations of our pupils and staff so that everyone can be the best that they can be. We aim to develop independent, aspirational, confident and resilient global citizens who reflect, seek out and embrace the world around them.
Our curriculum has been built on carefully sequenced knowledge which builds to facilitate the future acquisition of knowledge and skills. Equally, we ensure coherence through the whole curriculum through our five common themes, which are implicit in all areas, these being:
Cumulative Knowledge: Our curriculum is rooted in developing knowledge and understanding. Knowing things helps us to know more things. Knowing things helps us to connect with previous knowledge and to make connections. Knowledge provides building blocks. Within our curriculum these building block fit together to increase children’s knowledge over time = Cumulative Knowledge.
Big Ideas: -Our curriculum builds on key concepts or the big ideas. In our curriculum map we have identified the key big ideas for each subject, paying careful attention to how the material to be studied is organised. This gives children’s learning a clear rationale and conceptual rigour and allows knowledge and understanding to be carefully built on in order to access the subject in later years.
Building Substantive and Disciplinary Knowledge: It is our intention that pupils become a little more expert as they progress through the curriculum, accumulating and connecting substantive and disciplinary knowledge.
- Substantive knowledge - this is the subject knowledge and explicit vocabulary used to learn about the content of each subject.
- Disciplinary knowledge – this is the use of knowledge and how children become a little more expert as geographers, scientists, musicians, artists, mathematicians etc. This knowledge helps children to think geographically, historically etc.
Vocabulary: Vocabulary is planned sequentially and cumulatively from Early Years to Y6. High frequency, multiple meaning words (tier 2) are taught and help make sense of subject specific words (tier 3).
Knowledge Retention (Working and Long Term Memory): Our curriculum is planned so that the retention of knowledge is much more than just ‘in the moment knowledge’. The cumulative nature of the curriculum is made memorable by the use low stakes quizzes that help children to remember the golden nuggets. Golden nuggets of learning are revisited within units and across the curriculum – our aim for children to use their knowledge so they don’t lose their knowledge.
The Primary National Curriculum