Intent

At Green Park School, our knowledge rich curriculum is designed to inspire a love of learning and to meet the needs of all our pupils. It is broad, balanced, inclusive and ambitious and driven by our vision and values. We aim to ‘inspire our pupils to seek knowledge, develop their aspirations and achieve their goals and dreams’ whilst helping them to grow as unique individuals. We believe that we should have high expectations of all our children and that they are all capable of achieving as they progress through their learning journey.

Our curriculum is based on key drivers that identify what our children need in order to be successful, responsible global citizens and to go on to be lifelong learners. These ‘golden threads’ are woven through our curriculum to ensure that our children achieve success both academically and socially. These are:

Oracy

Oracy is an essential life skill which has been proven to improve educational outcomes, supports wellbeing and confidence, enables children to thrive both socially and emotionally and develops citizenship and agency (Speak for Change Report April 21). Our Oracy Framework weaves itself throughout all subjects and enables our pupils to articulate their learning within subject domains alongside developing their knowledge and use of technical vocabulary.

Reading

Our pupils are encouraged to read widely for learning and for pleasure. They experience the diverse nature of the world around them through the books they read and experience both in and beyond the classroom. High quality books bring subject areas to life and a book spine of essential reading in each year group ensures pupils access a wide range of texts and authors from all over the world.

Thinking Skills

In each subject we aim to teach children to think critically, analytically and creatively. Educational research has shown that when pupils understand how they think and learn they become more resilient and adaptable and make greater progress.

Diversity

Our pupils need a curriculum rich in diversity and inspiring role models from all backgrounds and walks of life. Our curriculum aims to offer this so pupils develop their empathy and understanding of the world around them and become respectful members of society.

Cultural Capital

Our curriculum aims to enrich pupils’ learning and develop them as individuals across all subjects. This includes arts education, understanding different cultures, character development, and resilience, community, developing strong values along with good mental and physical health. We believe that by developing the whole child, they will make progress and meet their potential not just now but in later life.

Physical and Mental Health

Our curriculum enables our pupils to develop positive behaviours and to know the importance of both physical and mental health. Pupils know that these contribute to success as a learner and to the achievement of long term goals.

Personal development and British Values

Personal development is essential for pupils to be able to meet their full potential as lifelong learners. Our curriculum aims to develop every pupil into well rounded individuals who contribute positively to their community, who can manage risk and live a happy, healthy and successful life. Our school values and British Values are taught across the curriculum so pupils understand the importance of democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law and mutual respect and tolerance.

By the time pupils leave Green Park School, they will be:

• Successful learners who can communicate effectively
• Confident, resilient, life-long learners
• Well rounded young people with a long-term memory of an ambitious body of knowledge
• Responsible and effective contributors to society with strong values and morals
• Principled, reflective empathetic individuals
• Ready for the next stage of their learning journey and on track to achieve their goals and dreams

Implementation

We deliver our curriculum through a subject specific approach to learning, making links across subjects where they naturally occur. Research always underpins the curriculum planning stage to ensure that this informs curriculum provision. (See our curriculum rationale document). Acknowledgement of short and long-term memory capacity as well as cognition overload features strongly in the planning and delivery of our lessons. We follow Rosenshine’s principles of instruction to achieve best impact from the planning and delivery of the curriculum:

• New material is broken into small steps in order to build confidence step by step
• Previous learning is revisited at the beginning of each lesson
• Teachers model the learning, thinking aloud and showing pupils each step (I do)
• Teachers provide scaffolding for difficult tasks
• Teachers ask questions to determine levels of understanding and whether knowledge needs to be retaught before independent learning can happen
• Teachers work with pupils to guide their practice (we do)
• Regular checks of understanding – what have pupils understood?
• When there is a high rate of understanding, pupils work independently (you do) – independent practice supports ‘over-learning’
• Learning is revisited and reviewed weekly and monthly so that it ‘sticks’.
• As pupils move through the school, learning from prior years is revisited so knowledge builds.
• Subject content knowledge has been clearly sequenced to build on prior learning. Clear sequential progression of aspects of a subject ensures children’s knowledge is built upon systematically.

At Green Park School we have mixed age year groups in KS1 and KS2. To accommodate this, subjects are planned over a two-year cycle to ensure coverage of the National Curriculum. Maths is taught in year groups as we take a mastery approach (see the maths pages for further information).

In each subject, we aim to teach children to be masters of the subject matter by building knowledge over a period of time and revisiting learning in a ‘spiral’ fashion.

At Green Park School we are: skilled readers, confident writers, mathematicians, scientists, historians, geographers, musicians, artists, linguists, theologians, athletes, designers and technologists, inclusive and diverse. We want our children to have no limits to what their ambitions are and want them to embody our core values.

Impact

We know when our curriculum provision has been successful because this will lead to excellent outcomes by all of our pupils including disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND. This will equally assure that pupils are ready for their next stage of learning. Pupils will demonstrate progress in their personal development as well as their academic progress and achievement.

Assessments in English and Maths are made for all pupils three times a year although ongoing formative assessment supports learners throughout the teaching and learning cycle.

We also aim for our pupils to recall learning with fluidity and automaticity when this is required such as multiplication tables and phonics.

We use both formative and summative assessment information every day, in every lesson. Staff use this information to inform their short-term planning and short-term interventions – including in the foundation subjects. This helps us provide the best possible support for all of our pupils, including the more able.

Subject leaders have mapped out the assessment milestones for each phase and these endpoints are instrumental in knowing whether pupils are ready for the next stage of their learning journey. As we have a two year curriculum cycle, these are built in at four points:

• End of Foundation
• End of KS1
• End of Y3 and 4
• End of Y5 and 6

Assessment information is analysed by Subject Leads, the Assessment Lead and Headteacher as part of our monitoring cycle. Pupil progress reviews for core subjects are conducted half termly (formative) and termly (summative). This process provides the SLT and Governors with an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the quality of education in our school.

We set out our monitoring cycle at the beginning of each academic year. This identifies when monitoring for all year groups is undertaken in all subject areas. Monitoring includes: book scrutiny, lesson observations and/or learning walks, pupil/parent and/or staff voice.

All of this information is gathered and reviewed. It is used to inform further curriculum developments and CPD for staff. Provision is adapted accordingly and actions decided for further improvement.