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 aligned our curriculum wherever possible to the best online resources available, such as National Oak Academy units.  This enabled us to move smoothly into home learning.

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 as we move into a more normal year.

Intent

Our school vision is runs through our curriculum. We are ambitious for our school community. We hope that children will increasingly understand how knowledge threads come together to give them a deep understanding of their place in the world and of their power to advocate for change creatively. We strive to give children strong foundations through the development characteristics of effective learning through:

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

Key threads run though our curriculum which we believe have a particular impact on SEND and disadvantaged children

Oracy is a key theme, with carefully planned work in all subjects to develop children’s ability to articulate their thinking (eg sentence stems, reasoning in maths, role play, debates)

Understanding power is a key theme, to help children understand the impact of power on human relations, and the methods by which this can be challenged. For example:

• Developing an understanding of local and national politics in our personal development curriculum
• Noticing power relationships between characters in stories and novels in English
• Developing an understanding of who is charge having an impact in history
• Understanding how human power impacts geographical territory and our impact on the natural world
• Understanding our own personal power to make protective choices in PSHCE
• Understanding how we can nourish our personal power through spiritual reflection in RE

Creativity is a key theme, with threads in all subjects encouraging children to play with the knowledge they have to respond with increasing originality to stimulus, for example with sentence stacking in creative writing, open ended art tasks, and encouragement to compose in music.

Implementation

Enabling environments

Readiness

• Warm, loving and confident adults
• Consistent routines and classroom rituals
• Appropriate stimulating resources/starting points

Respect

• Application of behaviour strategies including IBPs
• Evidence of listening to children’s explanations/reasoning
• Evidence of respectful challenge of thinking

Responsibility

• Opportunities for independence/challenge selection
• Appropriate time balance to allow for play, problem solving and independence
• Time for reflection

Teaching and learning

Readiness

• Structured planning including interleaving of knowledge
• Retrieval of prior knowledge
• Modelling, including vocabulary

Respect

• Responsive teaching eg observations, marking, questioning, mini plenaries
• Focus and control of who is speaking
• Adaptation eg change of direction/approach, additional questions to deepen thinking

Responsibility

• Time and support for independent practice and play
• Children responding to feedback
• Children reflecting on how successful learning has been

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 children through our values towards their personal development through five themes:

• Leadership and higher calling
• Inclusive participation
• Self care
• Presentation and advocacy
• Personal responsibility

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