Curriculum Summary: Intent, Implementation & Impact
Intent

Our curriculum is based on our vision of "Loving All Our Neighbours" and, in educational terms, we "provide a creative curriculum which is broad, balanced, fun and effective - which challenges each and every child so that their full potential is reached in life, as well as in the terms of academic attainment and progress - to be fully rounded individuals and good neighbours; people with the skills to thrive in the 21st-century with the capacity to be fully contributing participants in the communities in which they find themselves", linking specifically to the Church of England's Statement of Entitlement from February 2019. 

To achieve this, we have adopted a nurturing approach, where we foster:

• confident individuals
• effective contributors
• responsible citizens
• successful learners

This approach promotes achievement through academic attainment and progress but does it with children's wellbeing at the heart of everything we do.

We want learning to be relevant, purposeful and enjoyable while promoting the core skills of oral and written communication; application of maths and the supporting skills of information technology; working with others; improving own learning and performance as well as the development of problem solving and thinking skills.  These elements are enshrined in our Fundamentals of Learning and are seeded throughout all lessons and topics across the academic year.

The subject matter of a topic or theme is often developed or referred to in English or Mathematics lessons and the skills children learn in English and Mathematics lessons are practised and applied in wider lessons, which give them a sense of purpose and relevance and frequent opportunities are taken to allow our children to use their skills, such as using mathematics across a variety of subjects as well as giving many and varied opportunities to write at length.

Our choice of topic themes is based on three factors:

• The content set out in the National Curriculum for each of the subjects.
• The interests and needs of our children to nurture them as 21st-century global citizens.
• The core vision and values of our school: to be truly loving of all our neighbours (whether local, national or global); to be safe, ready and respectful (towards each other within our community, our neighbours beyond it and the whole world beyond that, in both human and environmental terms).

Implementation

Our approach is to balance a nurturing learning experience with high academic expectations, with our vision and values are interwoven in all that we do.

Children are taught as part of a topic based approach where relevant cross-curricular links are made, which helps children understand that subjects and disciplines are related, knowing that the skills they learn have real-life applications. During lessons, children are told the subject focus of their lessons and are provided with the associated assessment criteria, so that they are able to distinguish the different subjects, understand what they have to do to be successful and determine their own next steps for improvement.

Within the classroom, our teachers plan lessons that meet Quality First Teaching expectations: 

• All lessons have a high pitch, strong differentiation so that all can access the learning and robust formative assessment (by pupils and adults) to establish next steps.
• Some children who are falling a little behind others may need additional support  to help bring them back to speed: short term, targeted interventions support with this, mostly within the classroom so that wider learning opportunities are not missed. 
• A few children may need bespoke, specialised intervention outside the classroom to narrow attainment gaps which may be the result of special needs, social or economic disadvantage, emotional or mental health issues or due to the impact of COVID on their learning.

Lessons are structured with Bloom's Revised Taxonomy in mind, ensuring children are taken from remembering facts and information through to being creative with what they have learned.

We ensure that pupils are encouraged to tackle their learning with a growth mindset, where they will actively seek out answers rather than passively waiting to be told them: pupils will often take of 3B4Me as a result. We also celebrate mistake making (some of the world's greatest discoveries often started as mistakes), keeping positive about learning (never giving up) while understanding that we can always challenge ourselves to go deeper - surface learning may give the right answer, but what else can we do with our knowledge and understanding?

We deliberately mix abilities and ages in classrooms to sharply promote metacognition: older or more able children will take their own understanding of concepts to deeper levels through explaining them to their peers; while providing mutual peer-on-peer support, it also accelerates learning to the benefit of all.

All classroom staff, both teachers and those supporting them, recognise the need for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) to develop their own subject knowledge, and supporting children in their learning.

Impact

Each of our curriculum areas is driven by a Subject Leader who is also a qualified teacher.  As curriculum leaders, teachers assist school leaders by monitoring the quality of teaching and learning in their subjects, in accordance with our monitoring schedule, and feed back to school leaders and governors as appropriate, ensuring a continuous cycle of development and improvement for all subjects.

Children leave our school as well-rounded individuals, who have developed a detailed knowledge and skills across the curriculum, enabling them to be ready to pursue their secondary school education with all the skills associated with life-long learners - with a love of learning - who will go on to achieve well as 21st-century global citizens.

Long Term Curriculum Overview

Our curriculum is delivered over a 2-year cycle. The 2021-22 academic year is Year A, 2022-23 is Year B and so on. The following outline may vary from time to time, depending on operational need and national/international events which might require our focus instead (such as changing for an Olympic Games year).

Where parents or members of the public want to know more about the whole school curriculum, they may contact us using the form at the foot of this page.  If the required information is more specific to a given subject, please visit the relevant subject link below and use the contact form there to reach the Subject Leader for that particular discipline.