Curriculum

Our curriculum

We believe that good learners show a curiosity about the world and the ability to grasp ideas, link them together and think critically about them. Most importantly, they enjoy their learning and are motivated by a variety of subjects. In order to develop these characteristics, children need to be confident in the core skills of English and Maths and these subjects are at the centre of our curriculum. In the wider curriculum, pupils develop knowledge and skills in subjects such as the humanities and arts in the context of topics that are meaningful and interesting to them. Pupils explore subjects, learn and link facts and have opportunities to be creative in their response to their learning. We seek every opportunity to enrich children’s learning through educational visits to places both near and further afield and children will usually go on a day trip every term. This might be to a museum, gallery or park with activities linked to the topic being studied in class.

Intent:

At Brentfield we recognise that our children will be the champions for tomorrow.

We strive for academic excellence for all and nurture our children to prepare them for the opportunities and challenges of an unknown yet exciting future.

Our inclusive curriculum is carefully planned to ensure that all pupils have access to a broad and challenging curriculum, which provides children with rich experiences and opportunities to develop their understanding of our community and the wider world. The curriculum supports the development of communication so that children are confident to express themselves and articulate their thoughts and feelings.

Through our curriculum, we instil a sense of belief in the children to enable them to be creators of their own destiny.

We are committed to safeguarding our pupils, enabling them to become confident, well-rounded individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives.

Curriculum drivers are linked to our whole school BRAVE values (Belong, Responsible, Aspirational, Value diversity and Empowered) which shape and run through the entire curriculum and develop the aims and values of the school.

1. Belong: helping our pupils to be active and responsible members of the school and the wider community, including nationally and globally.
2. Responsible: ensuring that our pupils are aware of and take responsibility for themselves, their school, their community and global issues.
3. Aspirational: helping our pupils to build aspirations and know available possibilities for their future lives.
4. Valuing diversity: developing our understanding and appreciation of our diverse school and local community as well as the wider world.
5. Empowered: ensuring that our pupils have self-determination and resilience to enable them to articulate what is important to them and be change makers.

Implementation:

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

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

In addition to this, we believe that sustained mastery takes time. Nothing is sustained until it rests within pupils’ long-term memories. This cannot be assessed in the short term so when assessing, we will ask how well pupils are coping with the curriculum content and how well they are retaining previously taught content. Continuous provision provides retrieval practise for previously learned content.

The curriculum content is subject specific, which some cross-curricular links. There is a whole school overarching theme to each unit.

Impact:

The impact of our curriculum will be that by the end of each milestone, the vast majority of the pupils will have sustained mastery of the content. That is that they will remember what they have learnt and be fluent in expressing it.

In non-core subjects, teachers will assess impact through the use of ‘do now’ tasks in lessons to recall prior knowledge and assess how well pupils can apply skills and knowledge previously taught.

Curriculum Overviews