At Normanton Common we aim to inspire a lifelong love of learning!
Our curriculum has been designed to complement the strong ethos within school that every child can expect and will receive an excellent standard of education, one that enables them to shine as individuals, make a positive contribution and reach their full potential.
Our curriculum is carefully planned, from Nursery to Year 6, to ensure that our children are taught the specific skills and given opportunities to become successful readers, writers and mathematicians. These key skills are underpinned by a broad and balanced wider curriculum in order to ensure our children develop into active learners, active citizens and active communicators.
Our Curriculum Intent
The intent underpinning our curriculum is a simple one: to achieve the very best outcomes for each pupil in our school.
Through our school curriculum we teach our children to be:
Active learners who …
- Develop their independence and skills to work in collaboration with others
- Take pride in themselves and their work.
- Are ambitious and confident learners.
- Show engagement in their learning, asking questions and showing enthusiasm
- Show resilience – when things get tough, they don’t give up!
Active citizens who …
- Are caring, considerate and tolerant
- Value themselves, others, their environment and their world
- Celebrate differences
- Take care of their physical health and mental wellbeing
Active communicators who …
- Recognise the importance of developing their vocabulary
- Engage in wider experiences to inspire, enthuse and challenge themselves
- Make use of opportunities for language to share their learning and feelings
- Steep themselves in rich reading opportunities to develop a lifelong love of reading
Throughout our curriculum we promote a ‘Challenge & Educate’ philosophy. Through studying a range of people from the past and present, locally and globally, children are taught to challenge stereotypes connected to gender, wealth, disability, cultural and religious background and are educated that differences should be celebrated and are not a barrier to achievement or relationships.
Our curriculum pages will give you a flavour of our rich and varied curriculum!
How is our Curriculum planned?
As a school, we recognise our prime responsibility of teaching our children to be competent and confident readers, writers and mathematicians. These subjects, along with our key drivers, underpin our curriculum design.
We recognise that these areas of learning and development will look different across the differing ages and abilities of our children, but acknowledge that all of our children need a firm foundation in these, to successfully achieve in all other areas.
As a staff, we regularly meet to discuss and review the needs of our children, as both individuals and cohorts, in order to look at gaps in our children’s learning experiences. A specific focus is given to any of our children who are identified as having a special educational need, or who are classed as vulnerable, or those coming from a disadvantaged background. We plan so that our curriculum is accessible and supports their needs. A recent review of our children, including those with Special Educational Needs (SEN) and those classed as disadvantaged, identified particular barriers to learning through their lack of wider experiences and therefore the subsequent acquisition of new vocabulary and awareness of cultures and differences.
Integral to our curriculum is therefore the need to have a relentless focus on language, providing wider opportunities and enhancements and challenge stereotypes in order to develop the children’s vocabulary and understanding of society and the world around them.
With this information in mind, the senior leadership team lead on the planning of the curriculum across school, with input from subject leaders. Subject leaders are delegated the task of ensuring that their subject is carefully planned and sequenced. This ensures consistency, as well as, progressive learning, skills and knowledge development across all year groups.
Each subject leader produces a skills and knowledge overview, based upon the National Curriculum (2014). Our Early Years curriculum has been carefully planned alongside this, so that our children are ready and have the prior knowledge and skills needed, before moving into Key Stage 1 and 2. Choices on the specific content taught and sequence of learning is based upon many factors, but always with the needs of our current children at the forefront.
The curriculum is designed within ‘topics’, chosen to engage, inspire and enthuse the children in their learning. Each half term carefully chosen, key texts provide a starting point. This enables us to plan strong cross-curricular links using a different key subject area each half term to drive the learning. It also provides the opportunity for children to experience a wide range of books and authors, enhance their love of reading and develop children’s awareness of other cultures.
Topics are used to provide a context for learning, however within these, individual subjects are taught discretely. This teaches our children what it means to be a ‘geographer’, ‘historian’, ‘scientist’ etc. It ensures progression in skills and language development and allows them to take on the notion of experts in different subject areas. Within geography and history, ‘themes’ provide a thread throughout the curriculum, linking key areas of learning. The topics are set out as part of a two-year rolling programme in order to cater for the needs of the split year-group class. The cycle in place allows children to access new curricular content each year, alongside embedding previous knowledge, skills and concepts. Due to the spiral and progressive teaching approach that we use across the curriculum, children make progress in the knowledge, skills and understanding that they gain in each subject area.
Throughout all subjects we have develop a ‘Challenge & Educate’ aspect to ensure that children are taught to challenge stereotypes and are educated to value and respect differences, including those reflected within the nine protected characteristics. With this in mind, texts, story books and significant people understudy (across all subjects), are carefully chosen to provide our children with opportunities for discussion in order for them to learn and appreciate that differences are not a barrier to relationships, achievement or success.
How is our Curriculum delivered?
We have a clear teaching structure that underpins high quality teaching across all subject areas. This is based upon research, which evaluates effective teaching and learning practice. Class teachers follow a basic teaching sequence which includes:
- A recap and review of prior learning, this includes the reintroduction of key vocabulary so that children can start to make links in their learning and teachers can check children’s understanding before moving them on. Skilful questioning is used both at this stage and throughout the lesson, to check understanding and as well as provide further challenge.
- Modelling, which includes a clear demonstration for children, broken down into small manageable steps, thus allowing them time to understand what is being taught and what is expected of them.
- Guided Practice, where children are supported with some element of scaffold, to guide their learning before they become fully competent and are able to reinforce and embed their knowledge, skills and understanding through opportunities for independent practise.
Learning environments are carefully designed to support teaching and learning opportunities. Key vocabulary is displayed and reinforced and working walls are used to promote thinking and independence. Work is displayed and celebrated!
Both the senior leadership team and subject leaders are responsible for monitoring the planning, teaching and impact in their subject areas. They use observation, evidence of children’s work and pupil voice to support with this evaluation.
The high standards that we promote in English and Mathematics are reflected across all subjects.
Outcomes and progress towards end of year expectations, in all subjects are tracked by teachers and subject leaders, to ensure that our children are making progress across the curriculum.
At Normanton Common we recognise the importance of our role in developing children’s character and well-being, alongside their academic achievements. We continually review the needs of our children, our community, as well as current global issues, so that we can plan careful learning opportunities and experiences that will prepare our children with values for life, in order for them to become conscious, active citizens of the future.
Our wider curriculum brings together aspects of Personal, Social and Emotional Development, including a robust offer on healthy relationships and sex education, Religious Education, an active Eco-Council as well as Physical Education and Mental Health and Well-being via our specialist Mindfulness teacher.
Further information on both our School Curriculum, as well as our specific year group overviews, can be found on the subject pages of the school website.
If you require any additional information please contact Miss Gordon/Mr Riby or any of our class teachers via the school office.