Newton on Trent Church of England Primary School

Curriculum Intent and Implementation

The Newton Offer provides a curriculum that has been meticulously designed to provide a rich, exciting and challenging ‘broad and balanced’ thematic approach to teaching and learning sets high expectations that meet the needs of all pupils following the 2014 National Curriculum.  It encourages a love of learning, builds cultural capital and prepares the pupils for life as a successful, highly motivated and socially responsible citizens who are ‘Valued and Valuable’. As a Church of England school, the Christian ethos and values permeates much of our work, providing all our school community the ‘Opportunity to Flourish’ and ‘Live Well Together’.

Intent:

• Our carefully sequenced, coherent and progressive curriculum provides pupils with the opportunity to retrieve previously learnt knowledge and skills, and build upon those knowledge and skill, allowing them to deepen their learning across a sequence of lessons, across the year, across subjects and across their time at our school ensuring that they know more and remember more.

• It provides pupils with memorable experiences, enrichment and enjoyment opportunities where pupils can learn and develop a range of transferable knowledge and skills, develop a love of learning and become curious about the world as they build their cultural capital.

• It provides opportunities for pupils to develop as independent, confident, self-driven and successful learners, who know how to make a positive contribution to the society and form their own informed opinions.

• The curriculum develops pupils’ rich vocabulary, allowing them to articulate the acquired knowledge and skills in a range of ways appropriate to the task (e.g. in a debate).

• The curriculum supports the physical and mental well-being of our pupils, supporting the development of the whole child and their personal development as they build resilience and an understanding of how to lead a healthy lifestyle as they ‘Live Well Together’.

• The curriculum celebrates diversity and utilises the skills, knowledge and cultural wealth of the local community while broadening our children’s horizons beyond the immediate surroundings to ensure they live well together, celebrating differences as positive and celebrating uniqueness.

• The curriculum exposes children to a wide range of employment opportunities, further educational and personal interests to promote the endless possibilities in their lives ahead.

• Community is at the heart of everything we do. Be it the immediate school community, wider village and surrounding areas, national or global community, children are encouraged to be valued and valuable, making positive contributions to their community and wider society, and develop an understanding of British values.

• By creating a broad and balanced curriculum, our intent is that it is engaging for all and accessible to all to ensure that all children are valued, feel valuable and provided with every opportunity to flourish.

• The curriculum has been developed to ensure children are well prepared for each stage of education and the period of transition, be that within our school community or moving one form educational setting to another.

Implementation: 

The fundamental message underpinning our Newton Offer, is nothing left to chance. To achieve this our curriculum has been carefully planned to be sequential, and progressive.

We realise this by:

• Long term plans which meet the national curriculum requirements.
• Long term plans which lay out the knowledge and skills required in each phase of education and in each key stage, detailing ‘why this; why now’.
• Specific coverage of each subject is explicitly laid out. In English a progressive text spine has been designed to ensure children’s reading diet is broad, balanced, develops skills and exposed children to high quality texts and authors.
• Children are introduced to texts in this way to encourage a love of reading.
• Newton has a spiral curriculum where themes, subjects, knowledge, skills, are revisited and retrieved numerous times to be certain that children know more and remember more.

• Knowledge organisers have been created for practitioners to build their subject knowledge and lay out the vocabulary, knowledge and kills they will learn and retain. These knowledge organisers make links between learning already covered and learning still to come. This provides practitioners with the bigger picture of where the learning sits within the curriculum.

• Knowledge organisers are used as a learning resource in a variety of ways. They can be used as a reference, in class as a tabletop resource or to provide retrieval opportunities. Knowledge organisers provide the key assessment criteria which teachers use at the beginning and end of a unit to ensure the pitch and challenge in lessons in effective and as a measure of progress within a unit.

• At Newton we value the personal development of individual children. Intertwined into our curriculum we have developed an ‘Experience Passport’. This is a progressive list of experiences that goes beyond the academic, that we strongly believe all children should access. These activities have been selected to develop spirituality, awe and wonder and provide cultural capital.

• A wide rang of extracurricular activities are on offer throughout the year, both from internal and external providers as well as community experts. Participation in after school clubs is tracked to ensure staff can act to maintain our high expectations that all children will develop personally and will not be disadvantaged by external factors acting as a barrier to them attending.

• Inline with our vision of ‘every opportunity to flourish’ where natural gifts and talents are recognised, families may be sign posted and supported to access this experience outside of school.

• Our curriculum provides opportunities for children to be agents for change. Newsround is watched regularly in Key stage 2 so children understand issues that society faces on a local, national and global scale.

• Children are informed of their successes, next steps and progress on a regular basis through verbal or written feedback. Children are only rewarded at Newton for moments of achievement linking to character development, through our vision and values. High expectations are placed on children’s learning behaviours, independence, resilience and general self-help skills. High quality resources, displays and scaffolding are offered to enable these skills and foster independent, successful lifelong learners.

• A high expectation is placed on pupils developing a rich vocabulary across all elements of the curriculum. Knowledge organisers lay out a progressive list of vocabulary to be learnt and applied in each unit. A rich mandatory and complimentary text spine is implemented to ensure children are exposed to new vocabulary year on year. Story time is ring fenced and mandatory every day in every class. New vocabulary is explicitly taught and revisited numerous times to enable children to use vocabulary in context. Vocabulary for learning is also explicitly taught and is progressive so that children understand what observation means in art, science or geography, for example.

• We provide various opportunities for children to maintain an active lifestyle throughout sports funding. Our PSHE and RSE curriculum is progressive and delivers various units of work that promote the physical and mental wellbeing of our pupils. Mental wellbeing areas are available in every class and on the playground. The skills to use these effectively are explicitly taught.

• The Newton offer provides various opportunities for enriching, enjoyable and new experiences that push children outside of their comfort zone, nurturing resilience. For instance: school performances, swimming, choir and PGL. Daily classroom practise in all classes exposes all children to challenges that are challenging but achievable. Layered support is implemented in teaching sessions with scaffolding, modelling, differentiation, and the gradual release of responsibility all utilised to ensure all children achieve the intended learning outcomes.

• Our PSHE curriculum promotes diversity. Texts and resources have been chosen to mirror the lives of our children allowing them to develop a strong sense of self but also texts to expose children to the wider world around them and celebrate difference. Learning has been chosen across the curriculum to provide children the opportunity for learning about other faiths, cultures and communities. Children access experiences where they can taste foods, explore festivals and learn a new language. Visits to different places of worship are planned in to the curriculum.

• Community experts are welcomed into school as key figures and contributors of the community to share their expertise and skills with the children, providing children to insights into the possibility of a variety of careers.

• Children consistently give back to the community we serve by litter picking, contributing to village fetes, singing and reading to the elderly, raising money for the church and other national and global causes as they arise that the children feel moved to support. Children are made aware of various charities and their purpose by planned events within school, such as the yearly Readathon and Children In Need activities.

• At Newton, we are very much of the mindset that children will ‘keep up not catch up’ where possible. With our extremely high expectations that all children will flourish to their potential, we work hard to make this happen.  Teachers adapt teaching and learning to suit the needs of the children in their class to ensure it is inclusive for all, and all children can achieve at their level. Where necessary, additional layers of support are provided for those who need it. This may be in the form of short daily interventions for a short period of time, adapted activities or resources, adult support, scaffolding, differentiation or small group work. We use well researched and proven intervention programs to support our children both a academically and socially and emotionally.

• Planned summative assessment points and ongoing formative assessments ensure teaching staff know where children are working, what gaps or misconceptions they may have and where they are excelling. This information is used to tailor sequences of learning for the class and individuals.

• Individual passports are created for children with specifically identified needs to allow small achievable targets to be set and monitored. Where necessary, we work closely with outside agencies and parents to ensure we are all providing the same support and working for the best for the child. Regular meetings to review and celebrate progress are held.

• Children with a gift for a subject or unit of work are also stretched and challenged with open ended tasks, signposting to extracurricular clubs and additional levels of independence and being.

• Transition events are planned for each stage of change for our children. Children who are new to the Newton family and those moving to the next class are provided with the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the adults and routines of the next phase of their learning by spending time with their peers in the new classrooms with the new adults on transition mornings.

• Visits are made by the future teacher to new intake children in their setting alongside meetings with parents to gather information about children coming into our care so we can prepare for their arrival and make the transition as smooth for them as possible.

• Children moving from EYFS to Year 1 have planned transition arrangements, such as preparing to get changed for PE and still having continuous provision in the first term of Year 1.

• Our PSHE curriculum and the strong links we have made with surrounding secondary schools, facilitate the transition of our Year 6 children to their next phase of education, to ensure they are emotionally ready and have the information required to keep themselves safe and continue to live well.