Curriculum Implementation
At Arbourthorne Community Primary School we bring the National Curriculum alive through a Learning Challenge Approach. The curriculum in our school is continually developing and our conversations between colleagues and beyond the school helps keep our thinking up to date. We engage in research through a partnership with experts such as academics from the university. High quality resources with first hand visits and authentic sources as we develop our children as subject experts. We have developed a meaningful curriculum which promotes high standards meeting the needs of all our learners. Underpinning each Learning Challenge is an innovative skills based approach which is inspired by a thought provoking enquiry question. This is introduced through an exciting WOW event to inspire and enthuse children. The creative curriculum builds learners' skills and knowledge as they progress, placing child led enquiry at the heart of our school.
We place great emphasis on developing a broad and rich curriculum with literacy through the arts at its heart because developing children's vocabulary through a rich context is important in our school. The curriculum is enhanced by our Artist in Residence working with children and their families and delivering programmes with teachers and children which incorporate literacy and language development for whole class and larger groups to targeted groups including gifted and talented pupils and pupils with SEND. We aim to offer a bespoke and tailored approach wherever possible to ensure that children leave here with the building blocks needed in order to access the next phase of their education. Any perceived barriers are overcome wherever possible and aspiration and ambition are high in terms of pupil expectation and attitude to learning and each other. Future employment is a significant consideration when we are delivering our curriculum because we want children to have strong skills for employability in the future.
From the time they arrive in FS1 our curriculum is designed to develop the children's language and literacy experiences through an aspirational curriculum and places great emphasis on accelerating progress in children's ability to articulate themselves, develop a love of reading and to be proficient writers.
The core values are intrinsically woven throughout the curriculum with one value a month receiving additional attention and emphasis but each being promoted in the tasks the children engage in.
Our Curriculum:
- Starts with what the children know and need
- Aims to develop talk throughout and increases vocabulary and knowledge.
- Is enhanced by experiences linking our curriculum to the Arts. We have an Artist in Residence who compliments our learning challenge themes
- Aims to use Sheffield as a starting point- children get to know about their city past and present and their place within it.
- Aims to promote healthy lifestyles and living. We have a sports leader, an environmentalist, a clinical psychologist and LINKS sports partnership to enhance and develop opportunities.
- Utilises our life Skills House developing core skills from FS1 to Y6 with a dedicated team and external agency workers
- Engages parents in the child's learning and makes best use of home-school chrome books and Google Classroom
- Involves termly visits for all and aspirational trips e.g. London for Y6 which includes a theatre and Kidzania careers visit
- Utilises links with the University of Sheffield as we become a Maker School
- Is enhanced by partnerships which span ten years with Sheffield Girls' High
- Is enhanced by our Sheffield South East Learning Partnership (SSELP) of schools in which we pool resources for collective opportunities for our children.
At Arbourthorne, teaching of Learning Challenge contains the following elements:
- Knowledge Organisers (pupils use these documents with 10 Key Facts for flipped learning as well as reference materials during lesson time)
- Knowledge Lessons carefully sequenced, content rich and including plenty of opportunities to apply the new knowledge gained
- Presentations which support all learning styles, aid pupil memory and model presentation skills to pupils
- Work booklets containing high quality text materials, key graphics, models and diagrams, key terms and their definitions all of which are used for reference and interrogation in Learning Challenge lessons
- Essay lessons where children apply, expand on, and elaborate on all the knowledge they have acquired during that unit whilst reasoning, arguing, persuading and considering multiple perspectives
- Multiple Choice Quizzes supports retrieval practise, supports memory of facts and enables quick gap analysis
- Enrichment lessons and WOW experiences enable pupils to encode memories more robustly by experiencing opportunities to apply new knowledge first hand.
