Our School Curriculum
Changes to the curriculum during the COVID-19 pandemic
The aims, vision and values of our curriculum have remained constant throughout the pandemic, and have guided our planning throughout.
During the time of school closures, we had to make significant changes to our methodology in delivering this while the majority of children learned at home. However, we have maintained consistency wherever possible and worked to build on familiar ways of learning.
In our planning for 2020-21, we have aligned our curriculum wherever possible to the best online resources available, such as National Oak Academy units. This will enable us to move smoothly into home learning should a Tier 4 situation arise.
We use Google Classroom to manage our remote learning, and we will continue to deliver some school lessons via this to keep children's skills sharp.
Intent
To develop characteristics of effective learning in all children:
Playing and exploring
Children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’
Active learning
Children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
Building bodies of knowledge
Children must have a secure knowledge base from which to draw
Creating and thinking critically
Children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things
To promote our three core values in our teaching:
Readiness
Responsive teaching for each unique child
Respect
Positive relationships
Responsibility
Enabling environments encourage independence
To foster Christian distinctiveness through key strands:
Vision, Wisdom, Character, Community, Dignity and Worship
Implementation
Readiness
- Consistent routines and classroom rituals
- Application of behaviour strategies including IBPs
- Formative assessment eg observations, marking, questioning, mini plenaries
- Adaptation of teaching eg change of direction/approach, additional questions to deepen thinking
Respect
- A warm, loving and confident manner
- Listening to children’s explanations/reasoning
- Respectful challenge of thinking
- Opportunities for independence/challenge selection
Responsibility
- Appropriate stimulating resources/starting points
- Structured planning including interleaving of knowledge
- Repetition and checking of key knowledge in teaching time
- Appropriate time balance to allow for play, problem solving and independence
Subject specific curriculum maps that tie the curriculum story together for English, maths, science, RE, history, geography, art, design, PSHCE, SMSC, music, PE, computing and languages.
Bespoke interventions for children falling behind or needing additional challenge.
A rich programme of events which enable children to develop cultural capital.
Impact
Children's work is assessed in a variety of ways:
- Classroom feedback
- Recorded work
- Responsive marking
- Pupil voice
- Diagnostic tests and question level analysis
- Case studies
- Summative progress tracking