Whole School
Curriculum

Intent

Our curriculum is designed with two goals:

• To provide a coherent, structured academic curriculum that builds knowledge sequentially ensuring pupils are ready for the next stage in their learning and know and remember more.
• To give all pupils a wide range of experiences to develop as a confident, resilient, respectful and motivated individuals prepared to be global citizens of the future.

Design

Our curriculum is ambitious. It is knowledge based with regular opportunity for retention whilst also securing the necessary skills to become successful independent and expert learners. It builds on the school’s strengths including well developed SMSC provision, embedded school and British values, outdoor learning and enrichment. Children are developed as valued individuals with an emphasis on health and wellbeing both physically and mentally. Subject Leaders have designed the curriculum to ensure that it is relevant and contextual both locally and globally to develop a deep understanding of the changing world and community that we live in.

Implementation

We have developed six main curriculum themes that fundamentally underpin our curriculum aims and design. These themes encompass our values-based ethos, reflect the strengths of the school and are responsive to the needs of our community and the ever-changing wider world around us:

Communication | Expertise | Innovation

Individuality | Real World Engagement | Wellbeing

Our coherently planned academic curriculum is underpinned by our curriculum themes and uses the EYFS or National Curriculum (DfE 2014) as the basis for content and expectations. We have structured this as follows:

• All year groups have curriculum maps for each term including key expectations for each subject, values covered, community links, life skills and PSHE focus.
• Progression models provide a coherent and structured curriculum that builds knowledge sequentially ensuring pupils are ready for the next stage in their learning. 
• Retrieval practice and precision teaching are used daily in maths, spelling, punctuation and grammar and foundation subjects to provide regular opportunities to retain knowledge.
• Reading, phonics, vocabulary and spelling are taught systematically to master fluency, comprehension, language and prosody.
•  Assessment is ongoing through retrieval practice, low-stake quizzes, questioning and feed forward sessions. There is regular feedback between children and teachers. Core subject summative assessment takes place three times a year to inform teacher’s knowledge of gaps in learning.

Rosenshine Principles of Instruction

When planning and teaching, we carefully consider research on master teachers and cognitive supports.  We encourage all teachers to read these to develop their knowledge and understanding of the art of teaching. Teaching at Kings Hill School Primary and Nursery is guided by Rosenshine's principles of instruction.

1. Daily review

 We begin a lesson with a short review of previous learning.  This might be a review of vocabulary, events, knowledge, a previously learned concept or additional practice to learn facts and skills where overlearning is required to develop automatic recall.

2. Present new material in small steps

We only present small amounts of new material at any one time and then help pupils as they practice this material therefore each point is mastered before the next point is introduced. 

3. Ask questions

Questions help pupils practise new information and connect new material to their prior learning. Questions provide necessary practice and allow us to determine how well material has been learned and whether there is a need for additional instruction. This can also help to uncover misconceptions. Teachers at Kings Hill School Primary and Nursery use a variety of effective questioning strategies. 

4. Provide models

We ensure that we provide pupils with models and worked examples to help them learn to solve problems. We provide live teacher modelling, teachers think aloud while demonstrating how to solve a problem to support, teachers share excellent examples, and use worked examples as a step-by-step demonstration of how to solve a problem or how to perform a task. 

5. Guide pupil practice

After presenting new material, teachers will guide pupil practice. This might consist of the teacher working on the first problems, serving as a model for pupils. It could include a visualizer being used to demonstrate or a pupil working out a problem on the board. This provides additional models, more time for checking for understanding, asking questions and correcting errors and more time having pupils work out problems with teacher guidance.  Some pupils might receive further guided practice as part of our catch-up groups.

6. Check for pupil understanding

We frequently check to see if all pupils are learning the new material. Teachers can check for understanding by asking questions, by asking pupils to summarise the presentation up to that point or repeat directions or procedures. This helps pupils to make connections with other learning in their long-term memory and to alert the teacher to when parts of the material need to be retaught. 

7. Obtain a high success rate

 In order for pupils to obtain a high success rate, we need to ensure that we have broken material down into small steps, asked purposeful questions, modelled expectations and processes and checked for pupil understanding.

8. Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks

We provide pupils with temporary support and scaffolds to assist them. Scaffolds are a form of guided practice. They include modelling the steps by the teacher or tools, such as word banks, checklists to guide or evaluate their work, or a model of the completed task against which the pupil can compare their work. 

9. Independent practice 

Pupils need extensive, successful practice in order for skills and knowledge to become automatic and embedded in long-term memory. Independent practice is necessary because a good deal of practice (overlearning) is needed in order to become fluent and automatic in the recall of knowledge or skill. 

10. Weekly and monthly review

Retrieving knowledge from their long-term memory helps the pupil to strengthen their retention and knowledge. We use retrieval practice in every lesson, low stake termly quizzes and mini-topic tests to review the knowledge that pupils have retained to inform our planning moving forward. 

Impact