Introduction
Halling Primary School is incredibly passionate about ensuring that our children have a lively, interesting and fulfilling curriculum which builds on skills and knowledge.
Statement of Intent
The breadth of our curriculum is designed with three goals in mind:
- To give pupils appropriate experiences to develop as confident, responsible citizens;
- To provide a rich ‘cultural capital’;
- To provide a coherent, structured, academic curriculum that leads to sustained mastery for all and a greater depth of understanding for those who are capable.
Appropriate Experiences
We have developed four curriculum drivers that shape our curriculum, bring about the aims and values of our school and respond to the particular needs of our community:
Cultural Capital
Cultural capital is the background knowledge of the world pupils need to infer meaning from what they read and experience. It is the currency for social mobility and the acquisition of this will allow pupils to transcend their economic-given status whilst repairing divisions in society caused by gaps in knowledge. Specifically, cultural capital is powerful knowledge. It includes vocabulary which, in turn, helps pupils to express themselves in a sophisticated, mature way. At Halling Primary School, the way in which cultural capital is acquired and developed is multi-faceted. We give pupils access to carefully considered areas of knowledge through our vocabulary and reading spines (please refer to our website for copies of these). Furthermore, through the considerable breadth of our curriculum design, pupils are able to develop their knowledge of many topics. The continuous provision also plays a part in the development of each and every one of our pupil’s procurement of cultural capital and further opportunities continue to be reviewed, enhanced and added.
A Coherently Planned Curriculum
Underpinned by the four drivers, our academic curriculum sets out:
a) a clear list of the breadth of topics that will be covered;
b) the ‘threshold concepts’ (Learning Objectives) pupils should understand;
c) criteria for progression within the threshold concepts;
d) criteria for depth of understanding.
The diagram on the right, shows a model of our curriculum structure:
Statement of Implementation
Our curriculum design is based on evidence from cognitive science; three main principles underpin it:
- learning is most effective with spaced repetition.
- Interleaving helps pupils to discriminate between topics and aids long-term retention.
- Retrieval of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength.
In addition to the three principles, we also understand that learning is invisible in the short term and that sustained mastery takes time. We believe that learning is a change to long-term memory.
Some of our content is subject-specific, whilst other content is combined in a cross-curricular approach. Continuous provision, in the form of daily routines, replaces the teaching of some aspects of the curriculum and, in other cases, provides retrieval practice for previously learned content.
Statement of Impact
The impact of our curriculum is that by the end of each Milestone, the vast majority of pupils have sustained mastery of the content. That is, they remember a greater majority of it and demonstrate confidence in relation to it. Some pupils will have a greater depth of understanding. We track carefully to ensure pupils are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.
Sustained mastery
Nothing is learned unless it rests in pupils’ long-term memories. This does not happen, and cannot be assessed, in the short term. Assessment, therefore, answers two main questions: ‘How well are pupils coping with curriculum content?’ and ‘How well are they retaining previously taught content?’
If you require any further information about our curriculum, please do not hesitate to contact the school office who will put you in contact with the relevant subject leader.