Curriculum Design at Kitwell

At Kitwell, we want our children to have big aspirations, ambitions and high expectations of themselves. We are an outward looking school with a strong sense of community and we aim to create a curriculum that truly meets the needs of our children.

Through our curriculum we seek to:

• Keep children safe
• Enable confident, independent and active learners
• Improve children’s emotional, mental and physical health
• Improve children’s self-regulation encourage children to be resilient
• Support children to take responsibility for their behaviours and engage in restorative practice
• Narrow gaps for those not achieving at age related expectations via personalised and targeted provision.
• Expand the range of real world experiences
• Provide opportunities for children to have a voice, understand their rights and responsibilities
• Develop children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural skills and understanding – including the British Values of democracy, rule of law and individual liberty.
• Improve communication skills
• Prioritise reading and mathematical fluency

 We develop an understanding and respect for a wide range of religious values, languages, cultural traditions and different ways of life.                                                       

 We regularly adapt our curriculum to meet the immediate needs of our children and to respond to local and global issues.                                                                    

 Our curriculum is planned, sequenced and coherent. It recognises children’s prior learning and topics are chosen to enable children to build on the acquisition of vocabulary, specific skills and knowledge.

 We are building Sticky knowledge (key areas of learning we expect all children to acquire by the end of each unit) into our curriculum areas.

This ensures that children have component knowledge at the end of each unit of work that can then be built upon over time - this allow children to master “the basics” and develop greater depth of understanding and creative thinking.

The next step in terms of curriculum development is to formally incorporate “long term memory strategies” into our teaching and learning.

At Kitwell, we aim to provide our children with the Cultural capital, all the necessary skills and knowledge, to prepare them for life at Secondary school, to be thoughtful members of our community and to demonstrate British Values.

How we implement our curriculum at Kitwell

Our teaching and learning is centred around the statutory requirements of the 2014 National Curriculum and the EYFS Framework – effective as from September 1^st, 2021.

 Personal, Social and Health Education, including Relationships and Sex and Health Education, is also taught at Kitwell.

We use a blocked thematic approach, however some areas are taught discretely or via focus days. We use this approach to ensure coverage of subject areas.

The Implementation of the curriculum is primarily via Quality First Teaching :

• Highly focussed lesson design with targeted objectives and success criteria
• Short, sharp activities that demand a lot of children involvement
• Challenging work that builds upon prior learning
• Practical and engaging activities
• Appropriate use of Teacher questioning, clear explaining and modelling
• An emphasis on learning through dialogue – with regular opportunities for children to talk about what they have done
• An expectation that children take responsibility for their own learning and work independently
• Regular use of praise and encouragement to engage and motivate our children

Various strategies are used to ensure we provide children with opportunities to build upon their knowledge across all subject areas, such as scaffolding and questioning. We also aim to incorporate “long-term memory strategies” into our teaching and learning - such as spaced repetition; dual coding and retrieval practice.

We also use Progression of Skills documents to inform our teaching. These documents provide an overview of skills that need to be taught for each Foundation subject across each school year.  These ensure a cumulative skillset for our children.

Our themes are often cross-curricular in nature – ie: they incorporate links between foundation subjects and the core subjects. Most Foundation subjects provide opportunities to develop Reading and Writing skills, whilst the core subject of Maths can be taught via Foundation subjects such as Design and Technology, Geography and Science. These cross-curricular links are evident in our Termly Curriculum Grids. In Early Years – themes are devised by staff to meet the needs and interests of the children.

Our curriculum is adapted to meet the needs of our SEND children – please refer to various SEND documents and Bottom 20% offers for Reading, Writing and Maths.

Impact of our Curriculum

What do we hope will be the impact of our curriculum?

From their different starting points, we work hard to ensure that our children’s progress and attainment are at least in line with or exceeding their potential. It is our aim that children attain and achieve in line with Age Related Expectations                                                                                                   

We measure progress and attainment carefully using a range of assessment strategies. For example:

• deliberate short –term practices ie: quizzes and question and answer sessions are built into short-term planning
• end of unit assessments are subject specific and linked to the purpose/aims of the different subject areas
• Standardised tests are used in Reading and Maths to support benchmarking our school outcomes with those of other schools – both locally and nationally.

We set ambitious targets for all of our children and these are effectively monitored via School Self -evaluation procedures- notably termly Progress Review Meetings.  These targets are integral to our School Development Plan.

We use a range of self- evaluation strategies, such as book scrutinies, lesson visits, monitoring of planning, pupil voice and pupil outcomes to make judgements about the quality of teaching and learning at Kitwell.

It is our intention that children leave Kitwell equipped with all the creative, physical and academic skills and knowledge required for life in their new Secondary school and the wider community. They should take pride in what they do and be self-motivated learners. We hope that our children will leave Kitwell with the ability to be resilient and independent learners – able to face any new challenge.

We also strive to provide our children with the emotional and social skills required to meet the demands of being in a bigger school setting and for life in the wider community.

We aim for our children to be:

• Resourceful, self-confident and adaptable
• risk-takers
• able to cope with change
• able to have and express an opinion – they should understand that their “voice” is valued and respected
• able to demonstrate good inter-personal skills – how to share, be a good friend, how to be a responsible citizen – ready to live in the community demonstrating tolerance and equality
• able to know right from wrong – be able to make good, moral choices and not be influenced by peers to make inappropriate choices.

We aspire for all of our children to go out into the World and make a difference in their own life and those of others……