Our Curriculum Aims and Principles:
Coherence Consistency Curiosity Challenge
In our school you will see that we have shared values across the curriculum, our teaching and how our pupils learn. Wherever you go, you will see this through planning, lesson delivery, assessment and regular reviews of the curriculum.
Our curriculum incorporates carefully selected knowledge and skills which is brought to life in a way that is meaningful and exciting for pupils; promoting a life-long love of learning. It also provides the cultural capital that they will need to be successful in learning as well as in their future lives; Opening minds, opening doors.
The curriculum has been organised in a way which enables pupils to revisit knowledge and build depth of knowledge and understanding as well as in a way to help pupils learn more and remember more. Through the way our curriculum is organised, we help pupils make meaning of the world, develop their vocabulary and broaden their horizons.
Each subject is content rich, with knowledge carefully selected and deliberately ambitious. Our curriculum is coherent and well planned, building on what has come before and encourages pupils to be curious about their learning.
Lessons follow a clear sequence allowing opportunities for deliberate practise and memory recall; challenge for all pupils, through the curriculum, is central to what we believe is key. We encourage pupils to make connections across subjects, content, time and place.
Transference of knowledge from short term to long term memory is aided through the use of toolkits, purposeful working walls, regular retrieval practice and deliberate practice.
Promoting consistency across our academy allows pupils to focus on their learning and enables teachers to develop their practice. This happens through a variety of ways including the way in which the learning environment is organised in each classroom, the approach to teaching and learning e.g. Talk for Writing / Mastery approach to maths and in the design of our curriculum.
We place a strong emphasis on providing our pupils with rich experiences – trips to the birthplace of Shakespeare, to the Isle of Wight to learn how to sail and to see first -hand the seaside, forests, our capital city etc to expand horizons and expand life experience.
Assessment opportunities are carefully planned so that they are purposeful, support learning and inform us as to whether our curriculum and or the delivery of it is effective. These include both lowstakes, informal assessments alongside more formal assessments, including testing. A programme of continuous quality assurance is in place to ensure that the curriculum intent and implementation is
effective.
Our approach to supporting pupils who may need help to access the curriculum is through pre-teaching to make sure that they have the knowledge and skills to succeed in accessing learning rather than having to continuously be catching up.
