Curriculum Vision

Intent 

Reflecting our school vision and motto ‘Come as you are and leave as a Champion’ our aim is to provide our children with an engaging, exciting and empowering curriculum which prepares and equips them with the knowledge, skills and understanding for life in modern Britain and the twenty first century. Our Curriculum is a concept driven curriculum which has a progression of knowledge and skills. Our curriculum has been informed by the National Curriculum. Through the inclusion of concepts, subject leaders and teachers have created an ambitious, organised, focused and progressive curriculum, which drives, engages and challenges.  

Implementation 

Concepts, knowledge and skills are clearly set out in Children Knowledge Organisers for each theme within each subject. Our subject specific concepts act as our ‘coat-hangers’, whereby the children can hook knowledge onto. Overtime, new knowledge will be added to the concept and the children will begin to know more and remember more. Also, the use of icons to represent the concepts supports this. Through revisiting the concepts, children also revisit previous areas of study, widening their breadth of knowledge and understanding as well as building upon previously learnt knowledge - helping to create detailed and purposeful schema which can be further built on as the children move up through the school. 

Teaching these foundation subject areas in blocks (PSHE, music, PE and French are taught weekly) allows the children to immerse themselves into the subject area for a sustained period of time. This supports the children’s knowledge development, understanding and allows for children to build upon the knowledge they have learnt quickly as the sequencing of lessons is not disrupted. Being very aware that the children will then not be taught that subject for a longer period, we ensure that the concept, knowledge and skills within that subject area is reviewed and re-visited regularly. Using the Champion Learning pedagogy, daily, weekly, monthly reviews take place - helping the children to retain the knowledge into their long-term memories. By weaving in many previously taught subjects, the children then show their depth of knowledge by making connections and showing a ‘flexibility’ to their knowledge. It is this connected knowledge which highlights the child’s ability to understand and process information to a higher level. 

Champion Learning Opportunities  

We also hold additional experiences in high regard and see the inclusion of trips, visitors from specific fields of expertise, parental engagement, enrichment opportunities as essential to the development of the whole child. By launching our class texts in a stimulating and creative way, children are enthused to read and are given an insight into their new learning - motivating them to want to know more. Performing to parents allows the children to celebrate their strengths and share their journey with their family members. Trips, across all aspects of the curriculum, provide the children with unique opportunities that many of them would not have had the chance to do before. 

Impact 

Children remember more and for longer.  

In core subjects, termly formal assessments are used to assess children’s attainment and plan timely interventions. In science and foundation subjects, assessment is used as a teacher tool to make children’s learning schemas visible. As children acquire knowledge and skills, they connect them together to make complex schemas. Staff facilitate the recording of these schemas (in an age-appropriate manner) and use this to inform future retrieval and review sessions, thus ensuring that children know more and for longer. Concepts, knowledge and skills are all assessed and opportunities are also provided to allow the children to show their deeper understanding by making connections across the curriculum or recording knowledge acquired through independent study. Our 'Retrieval Curriculum' ensures that children are systematically retrieving and reviewing knowledge to strengthen long term memory. 

For more information about our curriculum, please email the school office - office@hempstalls.staffs.sch.uk