Curriculum

The Connected Curriculum

We believe that the purpose of the school’s curriculum is to educate the whole child. They need to develop literacy and mathematical skills to enable them to make sense of the world they live in and apply these to all aspects of the school curriculum. They need to be taught art, design and musical skills to lead to an awareness and appreciation of human achievement and the pleasure in creating. Our children live in a variety of communities and families that are diverse, with many differences as well as things in common. The communities are made up of different sexes, different ages, different races, different religious beliefs and different cultural beliefs. We want all children in schools in our MAT community to grow up respecting, tolerating and understanding the diversity and richness that all these different communities can offer to society. They are taught to do this to give them an understanding of life and the world that is broad and balanced and rich in experiences. They also need to understand how their community is part of the wider community of their town, their county, their country and their world. They need geographical and historical skills, knowledge and understanding to understand how their communities evolved and are evolving.

Mrs Jane Bass

Connected Learning Trust CEO 

Curriculum themes and focuses:

Whole school theme for Autumn term 2019 was ‘Be the Change’ and ‘Power’ in Spring 2020. The children were enthusiastic and engaged with these whole school themes and were able to experience their learning first hand:

Year 3- Equality and the Stone Age

Year 3 had a Stone Age visitor come in to teach them all about life in the Stone Age.

Year 4- Homelessness and Anglo Saxons

Year 4 went to an Anglo Saxon village to learn all about life in the Anglo Saxon times.

Year 5- Homelessness and Ancient Greece

Year 5 gathered information from Heidi at Colchester Borough Homes about the homeless issue ready for a debate with Mrs Bass! We also had a Greek day where the children made Ancient Greek food and watched a theatre production.

Year 6- Environmental issues and The Romans

Year 6 went to Colchester Zoo to learn about how they can help endangered animals and to Colchester Castle to learn about Colchester’s history.

Curriculum Intent

The breadth of our curriculum is designed to provide a holistic approach to teaching and learning that develops ALL pupils to be independent, active learners who acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and concepts to support the next stage of their education.

When designing the curriculum, we had three goals in mind:

1. To give pupils appropriate experiences to develop as confident, responsible citizens, while broadening their ‘cultural capital’;
2. To ensure that disadvantaged and pupils with SEN do not have a reduced experience through providing a coherent, structured, academic curriculum.
3. To ensure children have the opportunity to independently apply their learning, thus embedding the skills learnt into long-term memory. Consequently, leading to sustained mastery for all and a greater depth of understanding for those who are capable.

Our subject progressions have been developed in line with the national curriculum and specifically to ensure that, as a child moves through our school, from Year 3 to Year 6, the skills and knowledge they acquire are cumulative in nature.

Implementation

Our curriculum design is based on evidence from cognitive science; three main principles underpin it:

1. Learning is most effective with spaced repetition.
2. Interleaving helps pupils to make links between their learning and aids long-term retention.
3. Retrieval of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength.

Our innovative teaching staff are given context free progressions in subjects to develop their own connections and approaches to delivery. This best utilizes staff strengths and enables them to develop their own creative themes based on the needs and interests of their classes.

Stage 1 – Teach and model

Stage 2 – Practise and rehearse

Stage 3 – Independent application

Impact

The impact of our curriculum is that by the end of each year, the vast majority of pupils have sustained mastery of the content, that is, they remember and are fluent in the skills learnt. Some pupils have a greater depth of understanding. We track carefully throughout each stage, utilizing live feedback, self and peer assessment wherever possible, to ensure pupils are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.