Our School Curriculum
Intent, Implementation, Impact
At Gorse Hill Primary School we believe in enabling all children so that every child can reach their fullest potential.
Curriculum Intent
Our curriculum has 4 golden threads which are woven through all of our teaching and learning and underpin everything that we do.
Knowledge and Skills Intent
Our intent is for children to develop mastery across the curriculum. In order to do this, children are taught carefully planned and sequenced knowledge in each curriculum subject alongside the skills needed to apply this knowledge in order to be successful.
Language Rich Intent
Our intent is for all children to acquire knowledge, develop their vocabulary and have to tools to communicate their ideas and learning effectively, both orally and in writing. In order to do this, our curriculum is planned to include high quality texts, real life and hands on experiences and creating a range of opportunities for all children to be immersed in and engaging with language.
Experience Rich Intent
Our intent is for every child to be motivated, curious and excited in their learning and across all curriculum areas. Our intent is for our curriculum to provide all children with an invitation to learn and a breadth experiences that enriches their learning and enables them to transfer their skills across all curriculum areas.
Values and Community Intent
Our intent is for all children to embrace and develop a shared set of values. We want all children to understand the communities that they are part of and their developing personal values to prepare them for life in an ever-changing and modern world.
Curriculum Implementation
With the National Curriculum as our starting point, we believe that our curriculum allows us to provide a range of opportunities for us to develop the language, vocabulary, writing and oracy experiences of our diverse community of children.
Where possible, cross-curricular links are established however explicit teaching of other subjects using a variety of stimuli is adopted when strong, appropriate links cannot be made. Links between previous learning are made to support deeper understanding and to encourage children to apply their knowledge and make connections across curriculum areas.
Learning is carefully sequenced with regular opportunities to revisit and build upon prior knowledge to ensure the needs of the children are met. We recognise that we are all on a journey of learning and our curriculum mirrors this, using learning from previous terms and the current term so that we can embed short and long term learning.
Knowledge and Skills Implementation
The National Curriculum is our starting point for deciding upon the knowledge and skills that children will be taught in each year group and subject leaders have a clear progression of skills in their curriculum areas. Our curriculum is designed to ensure that, where possible, learning is relevant to our diverse school population as well as the wider community and is rooted in the rich heritage of all our learners. Where appropriate, cross curricular links are made to make learning experiences more meaningful and to give context to the knowledge acquired and skills taught.
Where this is not possible, other visual stimuli and experiences are used to make the knowledge and skills being taught as accessible as possible. Where necessary, the curriculum is adapted to ensure that all learners are able to access learning from their own starting points yet remaining ambitious and achievable.
Language Rich Implementation
In every subject, the key language and vocabulary needed by children to communicate their learning is identified on planning and explicitly modelled and used by staff.Vocabulary in all subjects is displayed on working walls to support learning and to scaffold responses from the children.
Sentence stems are used across the curriculum to support and model the correct use of vocabulary.
High quality texts are used to provide a wealth of vocabulary and to give context to learning.
Staff are encouraged to be passionate about language and model effective use of vocabulary within their teaching.
Experience Rich Implementation
Our curriculum is engaging and vibrant and encourages children to extend their learning through thoughtfully planned and sequenced lessons. Wherever possible, our children explore learning through trips, visitors and hands-on experiences that allow them to deepen their understanding, develop their curiosity and apply what they learn to different contexts.
Values and Community Implementation
As a school, our ethos is built around a foundation of a set core values, our CARE Values. These are the basis for the social, intellectual, emotional, spiritual and moral development of our children. Our values are: Courage, Appreciation, Respect, Responsibility & Excellence and we use these to teach our children to take care of themselves, each other and the world they live in. Each week, we consider a different value and embed this through curriculum links to develop the whole child as well as:
- A programme of school assemblies which discuss our values and how we demonstrate them
- Direct teaching and class discussion around each value
- Staff modelling values through their own behaviour and celebrating them with our children
- Ensuring that values are taught implicitly through every aspect of the curriculum
- Referring to our CARE Values through the use of Recognition Boards within classrooms
Curriculum Impact
We measure the impact of our curriculum through:
- Detailed data analysis for reading, writing and maths
- Regular pupil progress meetings
- Reflecting on the standards achieved against planned outcomes.
- Celebrating the learning at the end of each topic, where children demonstrate the knowledge they have gained
- Sampling children's learning across the school to recognise progress and attainment and to celebrate success.
- Pupil discussions with teachers, Subject Leaders and Senior Leaders about their learning
Curriculum Impact
Curriculum overviews by year group
Progression of skills documents by curriculum area