Curriculum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Curriculum Statement:

At Elsecar Holy Trinity Primary School, the children are at the heart of our curriculum. We want all our children to develop the skills, knowledge and understanding to lead a happy and fulfilled life. We believe that every child should have the opportunity to develop and build their self-esteem and self-confidence. We encourage all our children to have high aspirations, strive for the best and work towards their goals and dreams in life.

In the development of our curriculum there was regular consultation with key stakeholders of our school community. Our curriculum has been carefully designed with a clear vision of what knowledge and skills our children need to take advantage of the opportunities, responsibilities, and experiences of later life. We have worked hard with the Lead Practitioners of our Trust to develop our curriculum and ensure that it is personalised for our children.  This does not only involve the objectives set out in the National Curriculum but the development of other essential life skills such as:

      • Communication
      • Resilience
      • Perseverance
      • Independence
      • Empathy

At Elsecar Holy Trinity Primary, we have considered our children and the local community we serve and identified three key drivers which underpin our curriculum. Our curriculum drivers are:

Opportunities

Our curriculum is designed to provide various experiences which illustrates to our children the wide range of opportunities that are available for their future. This includes careers they could pursue, places they could go and hobbies/skills they could develop.

Language

Our curriculum is designed to develop and broaden the vocabulary of our children and develop the essential skills of speaking and listening. We work hard throughout school to develop children’s language skills throughout all of our curriculum. Throughout our non – core subjects we expose children to a range of language which is reinforced through a glossary. The children write down the word and then the correct definition which they can then refer to throughout their non – core learning.

Diversity

Our curriculum is designed to champion a wide range of culture and ensures that our children benefit from a full range of spiritual, moral, social, and cultural activities. These activities enrich their lives and those of our whole school community and make them proud of their British values and the diverse society to which belong and play an active part.

We have designed our curriculum to ensure all our children have access to a broad and balanced curriculum. Our balanced approach to the curriculum is not at the expense of high standards in core subject areas. High standards and enabling children to reach national expectations and above within the English and Mathematics is of vital importance if they are to succeed at the next stage of their education and go on to achieve full and happy lives and careers.

We recognise the importance of computing skills for our children now and in the future. As a result, we place high value on the use of ICT and the development of ICT skills. We expect that children have opportunities to use ICT throughout the curriculum, in addition to the direct teaching of these skills through specific computing lesson.

We also highly prioritise the development of the Arts and provide regular opportunities for our children to express themselves using the Arts. An example of this is through our drama festivals, music workshops as well as our art weeks which we have three times a year.

We carefully monitor children’s progress with their personal development and our well planned and thoughtful approach to SMSC helps to ensure that every child is well cared for and supported.

The development of skills progression documents for each curriculum area ensures that the curriculum is taught in a logical progression, systematically and explicitly enough for all children to acquire the intended knowledge and skills. The curriculum is designed to ensure that children understand and embed key concepts in their long-term memory.

Our full and rich curriculum, with its excellent range of experiences, ensures that every pupil at Elsecar Holy Trinity Primary School makes excellent progress both academically and personally. Our curriculum ensures that every child is given the opportunity to shine and flourish.

Pupils are encouraged to think creatively and critically and to respect others and the environments in which they live. The curriculum enables pupils to develop their physical skills and promotes their personal and social well-being.

We believe that the curriculum should stimulate enjoyment of, and commitment to, learning as a means of encouraging the best possible progress and the highest attainment for all pupils, preparing them effectively for the next steps in their education.

If you would like to find out more about our curriculum, then please contact either your child’s class teacher or Curriculum Development Ambassador:  

Mrs K. Westwood – k.westwood@smat.org.uk

What does our curriculum look like at Elsecar Holy Trinity Primary School?

Knowledge and links with reading and vocabulary acquisition:

We believe that knowledge gained also plays an important part in pupils gaining reading comprehension, and therefore, as we know that reading is so important, we place great emphasis on ensuring knowledge of the wider curriculum is sticky. We know that when pupils read and engage in reading comprehension activities, reading comprehension is dependent on knowledge of the subject being read. What we know allows us to read and understand what we have read. Knowledge learned across the wider curriculum facilitates comprehension. It also helps our pupils gain a broader vocabulary. We know that children are exposed to a richer vocabulary base when they access a broad curriculum, and this is very important to their future success. In our curriculum intent (plans), we have outlined the specific vocabulary children need to know, use and remember at each stage in their learning.

Starting the knowledge journey:

Our curriculum planning starts in Early Years. In our Foundation Stage, we begin to lay the foundations of the wider curriculum through our Early Years curriculum offer. In Knowledge of the World, for example, children learn about the layout of school and their immediate environment when they start to understand early map work (the foundations of the geography curriculum). We aim for children to:

  • Access to a rich curriculum broadens children’s exposure to a wealth of vocabulary, which we know to be of crucial importance in the early years.
  • Begin by laying the foundations for the wider curriculum prepares children for transition to Year One.

Making sure knowledge is sticky:

When we have designed our curriculum, we have made sure the following applies to enable pupils to retain the important substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge:

  • Prior knowledge is identified and built upon.

At each stage in the school journey, teachers make sure that they understand what prior learning has taken place and how well children have remembered it. They revisit prior learning, particularly at the start of a unit of work but also at other stages in the learning process, to make sure that they are building new learning on secure foundations.

  • Making links with other learning.

We know that knowledge ‘sticks’ when links are made between subjects. Webs of knowledge are created in our memories (schema) when we create meaningful links between learning. The more we introduce pupils to related content, the deeper knowledge will be. Key concepts in each subject are revisited over time and can be seen in our curriculum plans, which have the effect of making these links and building webs of knowledge. You will see some of these key concepts in our curriculum planning on curriculum pages.

  • Making sure that the way we implement our curriculum plans places emphasis on the most recent research into how to optimise the science of memory.

We understand that learning is defined as an alteration in long term memory. If nothing is altered in long term memory, then nothing has been learned.

Assessment for learning: assessing as we teach by observing and questioning to inform next steps needed for each pupil.

Assessment as learning: using some of these ongoing assessment strategies to consolidate learning and help children deepen knowledge in long term memory (for example, asking children to brainstorm everything they have just learned about the Vikings will help us find out what they know, where the gaps are to inform future teaching but will also help children remember more in the future as knowledge will become increasingly sticky when using strategies such as these).

Assessment of learning: Capturing at key end points precisely what children have remembered over time (we called this summative assessment).

We hope that this overview has provided insight into how we structure our wider curriculum offer (intent), how we implement it (implementation) and how we measure impact (assessment).

British Values

Reading

Writing

Maths

Science

Computing

Geography

History

Art

DT

RE

PSHE

PE & Sport

MFL Spanish

Music

Early Years

Phonics

Protected Characteristics


 

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