Intent
Newburgh Primary school offers the children a broad and balanced curriculum that is coherently planned and sequenced towards accumulating sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning, based upon the National Curriculum. Our curriculum is constantly evolving to allow the children a wide range of experiences to extend their understanding of themselves and the world in which they live.
The curriculum is designed to contribute to their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and provide opportunities for the development of personal skills such as resilience, cooperation, tolerance, independence and organisation. We support pupils’ physical development and enable them to become active individuals with a growing responsibility for their own health and well-being.
Developing positive attitudes towards their learning and seeing everyone as a learner and every experience as a learning opportunity is an important aspect of the ethos. We expect the curriculum to help children develop as enthusiastic, independent and self-disciplined learners who have a sense of pride and respect for their work, their peers, their school and the wider community and strive to achieve their best.
Within this broad and balanced curriculum an emphasis is placed on ensuring the children will be highly literate, numerate and articulate, and equipped for life in a sophisticated and technological society.
We believe that effective learning takes place when there is active involvement, opportunities to talk imaginatively and clarify thinking and where meaningful connections are made across subjects.
We are committed to a culture that promotes a positive and inclusive approach at all times. Lessons are planned to ensure that there are no barriers to every pupil achieving their personal best.
Implementation (How do we teach this?)
The curriculum policy reflects the requirements of the National Curriculum programmes of study, which all maintained schools in England must teach and refers to curriculum-related expectations of governing boards set out in the Department for Education’s Governance Handbook.
We ensure that we provide a broad and balanced curriculum which uses a thematic approach where appropriate. Subject leaders develop a long-term plan which map out the progression of the substantive and disciplinary knowledge within their subject area from EYFS to Year 6 to ensure children build on prior knowledge and are given opportunities to deepen this knowledge.
English subject leaders map the rich, quality texts that are used as drivers of the curriculum and ensure that a breadth of reading material is available to broaden and enrich their experiences. English is at the heart of the curriculum; reading and writing opportunities are planned to build upon their knowledge and to apply their knowledge in all subject areas. Discrete phonic, spelling, handwriting and grammar lessons teach children the knowledge they require to read and write.
Maths is taught daily and where appropriate teachers plan opportunities for children to apply their mathematical skills across other subject areas.
All subject leaders ensure that staff develop a strong subject knowledge of the content to be taught, the ways children think about this content, current teaching methods to ensure children do not become cognitively overloaded and how to identify children’s common misconceptions. Subjects may be blocked on the timetable or taught weekly over each half term to ensure that children experience a broad and balanced curriculum.
Impact – How do teachers monitor and assess this?
Teachers use a range of assessment methods both formative and summative to assess the children’s understanding and application of a concept. Assessment is used to inform teaching and ensure that learners remember in the long-term concepts, use knowledge fluently and embed their application of skills.
Formative assessment may include quizzes, observing pupils in class, mind maps, talking to pupils, questioning and scrutiny of pupils work. Summative assessment takes place in school in line with statutory requirements at the end of each Key Stage and to ensure we can track children’s progress between these Key Stages.
Assessment in foundation subjects is managed by the class teacher as to whether the child has achieved specific National Curriculum objectives relating to that unit of work. This assessment is present in the children’s books so that they and others can recognise their achievements and know what objectives they still have to achieve. Following each unit of learning teacher’s record children’s individual achievement in all subjects on the school assessment system. Subject leaders have access to the assessment system so that they have an overview of the attainment levels across school in their subject for all groups of children.
