Our curriculum planning and resources support a knowledge-rich curriculum that is coherent and cumulative.
Core knowledge is defined and articulated across subjects through a focused teaching sequence that is coherent, interleaved and built around spaced retrieval practice.
The BIG Ideas Maps help teachers and pupils see the complete learning sequence. These are also useful for parents to support home learning and engage with meaningful questions.
Knowledge Organisers convey the essential knowledge in one place to reduce the split-attention effect. Tier 3 vocabulary and word generation are developed within the core concepts that the knowledge organiser projects.
Knowledge Notes support each lesson, conveying concepts and vocabulary. They are used to elaborate on the core concepts and content. Knowledge notes redefine the purpose of pupil books. Children use their books to retrieve and reuse prior knowledge. Knowledge notes also scaffold and support the selection, organisation and integration of new understanding. These strategies strengthen cognitive connections, deepen learning and increase procedural and conceptual fluency.
Resources are dual-coded and designed to support easy retrieval. The use of contrasting black, simple icons is deliberate. Words and icons are designed to support decoding, connection and analysis of core vocabulary and concepts.
Vocabulary is mapped across Y1 – Y6 for Science, Geography and History. It includes Tier 2 and Tier 3 words as well as etymology, morphology, colloquialism and idioms for each learning module.
Study sequence is planned lesson-by-lesson using a question to focus the learning. Foundational knowledge is identified as an essential component within the sequence of learning.
Lesson-by-lesson questions enable teachers to know where strengths and misconceptions appear before the end of the study.
Cumulative questions are designed to test the understanding of the taught content, lesson-by-lesson. They are repeatable and reusable. They also are used to ease the forgetting curve and enable quick retrieval after dialogue and conversation that prime the memory. At the end of a study, pupils will respond and answer the full quiz to show what they know. This final quiz represents all the questions encountered and summarises learning for individuals and the class, then shared with subject leaders.
Pupils’ books are repurposed so they become more than just a place to collect completed work from a lesson. Pupils’ books, supported by knowledge organisers, vocabulary modules and knowledge notes are used to engage children in a variety of teacher-led, guided and independent tasks to help them generate, build on and connect prior learning.
Task design specifically takes account of the need to build pupils’ conceptual fluency. By building pupils’ confidence and competence in tried and tested learning approaches, we can refocus their cognitive capacity to the most important thing – the content that they are learning. An example of this could be the use of an organisational Venn diagram in multiple contexts. At first it could be used to categorise Animals, including Humans in Year 1 and then later in the sequence, through spaced retrieval practice, children compare and contrast Animals, including Humans, using the same diagram. Likewise, pupil may meet similar response frameworks throughout the Reading units for skills such as retrieving facts to complete a table or sequencing events from a narrative and this will allow them to approach this task in the context of ever-more challenging texts.
Deepening concepts are revisited in each topic and form the foundations of learning for each subject, giving children the opportunity to revisit key skills in a number of contexts, utilising the spacing effect to ensure they are retained and built upon in the long term. These are skills which underpin learning and deepen understanding of how to become a master within each subject.