Curriculum Design Statement: Intent, Implementation and Impact

Intent

Sitwell Junior School promotes a flexible, knowledge and skills based curriculum designed to engage, develop and innovate all our children.  Our curriculum is a carefully planned thematic approach to teaching and learning designed to support children’s natural curiosity and stimulate their creativity. It aims to inspire and challenge all pupils and prepare them for the future. 

We use the Sitwell 7 Values of Respect, Responsibility, Relationships, Resilience, Resourcefulness, Risk-taking and Reflection to promote positive attitudes to lifelong learning and develop children socially, emotionally and academically.

Appropriate Experiences

We have developed three drivers that shape our curriculum, bring about the aims and values of our school and respond to the particular needs of our  children:

  • Community – which helps pupils to belong and be an active member of our school, the locality, our country and the world.
  • Possibilities – which helps pupils to build aspirations and know available possibilities for their future lives.
  • Responsibility – which helps pupils to understand the purpose of our curriculum and the part they play in achieving their full potential.

Implementation

Our curriculum design is based on evidence from cognitive science and the key principle that retrieval of previously learned content must be frequent and regular, which increases both storage in the long-term memory and retrieval strength. 

Some of our content is subject-specific, whilst other content is combined in a cross-curricular approach. Incidental learning, 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.

The curriculum is implemented through quality first teaching which leads to long-term learning. This is delivered through the following methods:

  • high expectations of all (Ready, Respectful, Safe)
  • starting from a learner’s existing understanding 
  • secure teacher subject knowledge
  • clear and concise learning objectives
  • new material presented in small, manageable steps
  • effective modelling 
  • scaffolding to cater for the needs of all learners 
  • targeted questioning and systematic checking and feedback, responsive to outcomes within each lesson
  • retrieval practice
  • independent practice

English

At Sitwell Junior School, English is at the heart of the curriculum. We aim for all of our children to develop a lifelong love for reading of both fiction and non-fiction books. Through carefully planned sessions, which cater for every child, children explore a range of literature, ranging from the classics and historical fiction to those by modern day authors. These quality texts are used to develop the children’s rich language and communication skills; both orally and in writing. Included in our writing sessions are activities that aim to develop grammar, punctuation and spelling skills, as well as to further our children’s imagination and creativity. In addition to daily English sessions, reading and writing plays a pivotal role in our wider curriculum. 

Maths

We strongly believe that all children, no matter what their starting points, can become confident, competent mathematicians. The importance of children having a secure understanding of the foundations of number cannot be underestimated, and so we implement a watertight approach to ensure all children acquire this knowledge at the earliest opportunity. By breaking concepts down into small, manageable steps, children are given time to consolidate and deepen their understanding through various forms of practice, so that they can become true masters of the Primary Mathematics Curriculum.

Impact

The impact of our curriculum is that by the end of each phase (Y3/4 and Y5/6), the vast majority of pupils have sustained mastery of content. That is, they remember it all and are fluent; some pupils have a greater depth of understanding and are able to retrieve this knowledge and apply it to other contexts. Our pupils leave Sitwell Junior School confident, independent, aspirational, emotionally intelligent members of the community. We track pupils’ progress carefully to ensure they are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.

Long Term Curriculum Plans

Please click on the links below to view our Year Group Long Term Plans:

Topic Overviews

Please click on the link below to view our Year Group Topic Overviews:

Knowledge Organisers

Please click on the link below to view our Knowledge Organisers:

Whole School Curriculum Progression

Click here to view the above document

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