Curriculum Intent
Curriculum Intent
At Halsnead Primary School, we believe that all children should love learning and be passionate about the knowledge they encounter throughout our curriculum. Our curriculum intent is captured through the following themes:
R-E-A-C-H
Retention
Extending
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
Application
Cultural Capital
Halsnead
Values
Values
Retention and Application: of powerful knowledge: Our curriculum enables children to retain powerful knowledge so that they can build on it and use it later in life when forming arguments and judgements, or when reading and solving problems. By the time children leave our school in Year 6, they will be able to recall and make links across a wide range of powerful knowledge and confidently take part in debates, analysis, critical thinking and problem-solving.
Extending vocabulary: Our curriculum ensures pupils can retain and use a wide range of powerful and ambitious vocabulary. By the time pupils leave us in Year 6, they will be able to communicate with confidence in the world beyond our school gate, have a love of reading and a plethora of rich and powerful vocabulary.
Cultural Capital: Our curriculum ensures all children are exposed to a wide range of experiences that will develop their cultural capital and promote social mobility, both now and in the future. By the time pupils leave us in Year 6, they will have wealth of experiences beyond learning knowledge in the classroom. They will be intellectually curious and inspired to want to learn more. They will have a strong sense of global awareness and know their responsibility and role in our world, both now and in the future.
Halsnead Values: Our curriculum instils in our children 6 core values. By the time children leave us in Year 6, they will be kind, resilient, aspirational, collaborative, respectful individuals who show integrity in all they do.
Our Curriculum
At Halsnead Primary all our children will study the 2014 National Curriculum for both core and foundation stage subjects.
In Key Stage One and Key Stage Two, children are taught all the elements of the 2014 National Curriculum for both core (English, Maths and Science) and foundation subjects (history, geography, music, art, physical education (PE), design technology and religious education).
The Foundation Stage children will experience the seven areas of learning that are required, and they are organised under the following areas:
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Communication and Language
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Physical Development
- Expressive Art and Design
These areas underpin the organisation of the learning environment; the activities provided for children and the monitoring of children's progress and development.
Curriculum Overview
Our curriculum is a 2-year rolling program. The overview can be found at the bottom of this page.
To find out more about the Curriculum, please contact our school office and ask to speak to Mr Catt or our curriculum lead, Mr Doherty.
Lesson Approach
At Halsnead Primary school we have devised an approach to teaching that supports children with knowledge retention and the development of metacognitive principles. See below for more information.
Knowledge Planners
We have developed knowledge planners to support children with their learning, both in school and at home.
Purpose:
• Specifies the exact knowledge and vocabulary we expect children to be confident recalling and applying.
• Paints a clear picture of the learning journey of our curriculum.
• Acts as a planning tool for teachers.
• Enables children to independently revist, assess and retain knowledge from current and previous topics.
• Enables children to become independent learners.
• Enables children to self-quiz.
• Acts as an assessment tool for teachers and children.
• Used during lessons as a reference tool.
• Used during lessons as a revision tool.
• Used for homework tasks.
• Enables all stakeholders (children, parents, staff, governors) to know where learning has come from and where it is going next.
Retention opportunities are systematically mapped out to enable children to revisit prior knowledge.
Knowledge planners will be kept in school and will be used as a learning tool and referred to during lessons. They may also be used as part of homework, where children will spend time learning specified facts.
Knowledge Planner Layout/Format
• Knowledge planners will always be a work in progress and will continue to evolve and change.
• Knowledge page – A page consisting of all the key knowledge that children must be fluent with for a particular topic. In order to meet the expected standard, children must be able to demonstrate their understanding of most of these key facts through both written and spoken tasks.
• Vocabulary page – This will be a list of all the vocabulary that children must be able to define and apply to both written and spoken tasks with fluency and ease.
• Knowledge Quiz – This will be a short exit quiz that children will complete at the end of the topic. This quiz can be used to support knowledge retention at home and in school.
10 ideas for Knowledge Planner Activities at home or in school:
1. Expand it – choose a fact and expand on it. Use research or your own knowledge.
2. Draw it – draw a picture to help you remember a fact.
3. Map it – organise some of your facts into a mind map.
4. Present it – give a short presentation to a partner about your topic. Try to include lots of facts.
5. Vocab lab – choose 5 words from your vocab page and write a concise definition for them.
6. Dictionary definition – look up and copy the definition of some words from your vocabulary page.
7. Quiz a partner – choose 3 questions to ask your partner. Check the answers on the knowledge page.
8. Write a question – write your own quiz question based on one of your facts.
9. Numbers – write down all the numbers that are related to facts. Write down one word next to the number to help you remember the facts
10. Order it – choose your top three tricky facts to remember. Write them in rank order of difficulty.
We model and teach children independent learning strategies to aid with knowledge retention. See below for memory strategies used at Halsnead, as well as example knowledge planner pages from a range of subject topics.
