LONGMAN’S HILL CP SCHOOL CURRICULUM STATEMENT.
An outstanding curriculum offer must be much broader than the statutory National Curriculum, which was revised in 2014. At Longman’s Hill, we plan a curriculum which reflects our four school values: Ambition, Creativity, Respect and Courage and which incorporates ways to wellbeing, positive emotional and mental health and metacognitive learning.
In line with the Equalities Act (2010) and The Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations (2014), Longman’s Hill School adheres fully to the Inclusion agenda for access to the National Curriculum and all areas of school life for all pupils. We aim to identify and remove barriers for any children who may be at risk of underachievement; this includes children with special educational needs or a disability. The identification of vulnerable pupils and the support given by the school is a key element of the school’s ethos. Partnership with parents of these children is vital to achieve success.
CURRICULUM INTENT
When designing our curriculum, our INTENT was to consider three main things:
- The basic principles on which to base our curriculum
- The breadth and depth of study, including all statutory requirements; ensuring a broad and balanced curriculum offer is crucial.
- The way in pupils would progress through the curriculum, accessing knowledge in a sequential way.
1. We INTEND our curriculum to be based on these BASIC PRINCIPLES :
- In the real world, subjects are not split up separately- that is why we choose to deliver the curriculum in a cross curricular way whenever possible.
- Knowledge and Information are not the same thing. Learning happens when pieces of separate information are connected in a meaningful way to create knowledge AND this knowledge must be committed to long term memory before we can say something has been learned (as opposed to being taught or experienced). To commit knowledge to long term memory requires time and repetition, with spaces between. We have identified key concepts in each curriculum area (known as threshold concepts) which are revisited often throughout school, with spacing in between.
- We propose that learning cannot be seen/ evidenced in the short term- to commit knowledge to long term memory takes time and repetition.
Our school curriculum is designed to achieve a number of things which we view as vital. These are:
- Developing children’s curiosity and encouraging a hunger for new learning, throughout their lives.
- Developing independence.
- Building a solid foundation, not only for a child’s school career, but also for life in the future as responsible, active citizens.
- Creating a collection of memorable learning experiences and broadening horizons, both within the classroom and in the wider environment.
- Offering an exciting first opportunity to explore different curriculum subjects.
- Gaining knowledge and perhaps more importantly, skills, which can be applied in a variety of contexts.
- The context of our school is predominantly white British so we seek opportunities to deepen children’s understanding of other cultures, communities and faiths and promoting Fundamental British Values
- Recognition that whilst academic achievement is important, it is not the only measure of success. Therefore, we have an outstanding extra-curricular offer.
- Equity – not only ensuring every child has equal access to the curriculum through a mastery based approach but also to develop children’s understanding of equality and diversity.
2. We INTEND to cover a breadth of knowledge and develop a deep understanding of some key concepts.
The curriculum taught at Longman’s is made up of 3 components: National Curriculum, School Curriculum and Extra-curriculum.
As defined in the Education Act (2020), as a minimum our curriculum:
- Is underpinned by Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural values which include Fundamental British values.
- Is designed to prepare children for the next stage in their education / future life
- Is coherently planned, building on the ambition of the National Curriculum requirements
- Includes a daily act of Collective Worship which must be predominantly Christian based
- Includes a programme of study for Religious Education
- Includes a programme for Personal development, which includes Relationships and Sex education.
The National Curriculum is taught and is enhanced with a school curriculum.
School Curriculum
Despite pressure on schools to produce excellent academic / test results, at Longman’s Hill we have always stood by the principal of providing a creative curriculum and have resisted the temptation to move to a test driven, narrowed curriculum. We strongly believe that by ensuring our curriculum offer is wide and varied, we can develop children who are well prepared for future challenges.
Our SCHOOL CURRICULUM has other elements which we have introduced to support children at OUR school. These elements of the curriculum have been introduced to address gaps in experiences of our children which are unique to our school and children in the Selby area. Crucially, this aspect of the curriculum (along with extra-curricular activities) is designed for personal/ character development. Our school curriculum includes:
- Forest School– every class does half day a week for one term in the year. This supports children in the development of valuable dispositions for learning such as collaboration, resourcefulness, resilience, problem solving, adaptability, determination and purposefulness.
- A great deal of work to support positive mental health, including using meditation and breathing practices across school on a regular basis and during Forest School sessions. We encourage children to explore the themes in the Five Ways To Wellbeing wherever possible. Interventions are delivered for children with high social / emotional needs or diagnosed mental health issues. Interventions include Thrive, lego therapy and a nurture club at lunchtimes (Woodland Club). We have increasing numbers of children with SEMH issues so this is an important aspect of our curriculum offer. A local mental health charity described the work done in this area at our school as ‘inspirational’.
- SMSC and Fundamental British Values promoted across school. We do a lot of work every year to support local and national charities eg Macmillan, youth mental health charities, York hospital butterfly appeal, local gym club, Leeds children’s heart surgery unit, Comic Relief, sport relief & Children in Need to name a few recent ones.
- Fab families – children from EY to Y6 are grouped into families; we do events each year. This is used as a way to promote collaboration and responsibility.
- Parental / community events/ links eg maths mornings, stay & create for parents, choir sings at local events. in the past we have also organised intergenerational projects eg Y5 became penpals with pensioners at a local care home and went for afternoon tea there.
- We organise a great many school trips and visitors to school to enhance what we deliver as core national curriculum. We aim to organise a whole school annual trip – recent ones have included the Arboretum and The Yorkshire Sculpture park.
- We organise a whole school visit to a different place of worship on a biannual basis and a visitor from a different faith on the alternate year. We plan for these trips because Selby is a mainly white Christian town; without such planned events children would not be exposed to a range of faiths and cultures. Recent trips and visitors include:
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- Academic Year 2019/20- Synagogue Sheffield (whole school)
- Academic Year 2018/19- Jewish faith leader ran workshops for all classes in school
- Academic Year 2017/18- Buddhist temple (whole school)
- Academic Year 2016/17 – Imam (Muslim) ran workshops for every class in school
- Academic Year 2015/16 – Sikh Temple- Mandir (whole school)
- Academic Year 2014/15 – Mosque Leeds (whole school)
- Additionally, Dec 15 and Dec 18 – three classes visited King’s Church in Selby for their Christmas Experience, Summer 2019 – all classes visited Selby Abbey as part of the 950 years anniversary celebrations, Y1/2 and Y5/6 have also visited the abbey for tours as part of their topics
- We enhance the core NC subjects eg maths- we run the Richard Branson Fiver Challenge every summer across school (Y2 travelled to London in 2015 having won a national prize!), ‘Inspirational maths’ program is rolled out across school for the first week of every Autumn term annually. We use Talk for Reading across school to enhance the reading experience and get children hooked on books and talking about them and we encourage regular reading using a weekly reading challenge competition in school.
- We are involved in an exceptional amount of sporting competition– inter and intra. We have been awarded the gold standard School Games Mark (a national award) in summer 2020, in recognition of the good work we do in this area.
- We offer Bikeability to our Y5 children annually; the roads are very busy in the Selby area and this offers the chance to get some basic road awareness and safety.
We have also developed a list of 60 amazing experiences which we will offer your child during their time at our school; each child will receive a special record book when they start at our school. This offers activities and experiences from EY to Y6; activities have been planned to link to the 5 Ways to Wellbeing and also include some of the National Trust outdoor activities. Life skills are also included in the list. You can view a PDF version of the book by clicking on the link:
THE LONGMANS LIST BOOKLET FINAL
Extra- Curricular Offer
Our extra-curricular offer is excellent; this aspect of the curriculum is designed for personal/ character development. Our offer includes:
- Before and after school clubs, all of which are free and accessible for all children. Several sports clubs before /after school are run by a specialist coach eg football, multi skills, dodgeball, netball, rugby, hockey, running, cricket
- In addition to sports clubs, other clubs eg wellbeing warriors, mindful colouring, lego, Japanese , gardening, STEM, choir , science, coding club
- 3 x residentials offered in KS2. York Y4, Robinwood Y5, PGL outdoor residential Y6.
- An active school council which is democratically voted in by their peers. In the past, we have linked with other school councils in local schools, visiting and hosting other school council members and working on a joint charity project.
- Online software packages which enable children to access learning at home if they wish eg IDL (a spelling intervention program), Mathletics, J2E (computing software). This is free for pupils to access at home.
- Strong links with local secondary schools; children in KS2 attend experience days annually. Our staff are forging links with high school staff to enhance our curriculum offer.
- All children have the opportunity to participate in a school production annually.
- Read more about our extra-curricular offer here.
3. Progression through the Curriculum.
Each subject leader has written a knowledge skills and vocab progression grid for their subject to ensure the curriculum is appropriately sequenced. This shows the WHAT and WHEN for each subject. By identifying threshold concepts for each subject area, which are re-visited through different content throughout school, we ensure learning ‘sticks’ and is committed to long term memory through repetition.
We also use ‘Do Now’ as part of a mastery approach to revisit key information/ facts across school. By revisiting learning, with spacing between, we can ensure that learning ‘sticks’.
CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION
A good grasp of reading, writing and numeracy are key skills for life and we work hard to ensure that all children acquire the necessary skills at our school.
To find out more about these core curriculum areas at our school click on the links below:
We use a broadly thematic approach but some subjects do not lend themselves to be taught through a theme and may be more standalone. Using topics allows more opportunities for children to make links and connections between learning and so remember more over time; “Learning is not about memorising disconnected facts.” (Ofsted )
We take a principled view which is to ensure all children have access to the National Curriculum; a broad and balanced curriculum which is enhanced by a wider school curriculum and extra curricular offers. We strongly believe our curriculum should be broad to develop well rounded citizens but that there must be opportunities to develop understanding of key concepts (threshold concepts) more deeply. We do not (and have never) ‘hothoused’ children or narrow the curriculum at any point/ in any year groups to prepare for national tests.
We use a mastery approach to teach our curriculum.
We have considered how children can be exposed to ‘the best that has been thought and said’ (Cultural Capital) across the curriculum. We think of cultural capital as ‘powerful knowledge’ which can shape children’s thinking and give them the knowledge necessary to engage in meaningful discussion, both now and throughout their lives.
For some subjects, the curriculum is taught on a one year cycle with objectives specific to each year group: science, music, computing, French, PE, RE, PHSCE, maths
Some subjects are taught on a 2 year cycle– DT, Art , Geography, History.
You can see our curriculum Long Term Plans Here. In 20/21 , we followed cycle A and in 2021/22 we are following cycle B:
LONG TERM PLAN KS1 YEAR A FINAL
LONG TERM PLAN KS1 YEAR B FINAL
LONG TERM PLAN Y3 and Y4 YEAR A FINAL
LONG TERM PLAN Y3 and Y4 YEAR B FINAL
LONG TERM PLAN Y5 and Y6 YEAR A FINAL
LONG TERM PLAN Y5 and Y6 YEAR B FINAL
IMPACT OF OUR CURRICULUM
How we evaluate and monitor the impact of our school curriculum.
Senior school leaders, including governors, regularly monitor curriculum provision through learning walks, lesson drop ins, work scrutiny and by talking to children. All of the monitoring is unannounced; teachers do not know when they will be monitored and this provides a good opportunity for leaders to get a realistic view of the quality of teaching and curriculum provision; leaders see the realistic ‘daily diet’ of our children.
Subject leaders also regularly monitor their curriculum area, at least twice per term. Subject leaders are linked with school governors, who hold them accountable for children’s achievement in that subject.
Data analysis also forms an important part of the picture. For both core and foundation subjects, teachers make judgements about pupil achievement and attainment and subject leaders analyse this data annually (termly for Maths and English).
Our excellent curriculum has been recognised through a number of national, externally validated awards including:
- Healthy Schools Award – Gold Standard June 2021
- Primary Quality Science Mark at Gilt level. May 2021
- School Games mark- gold standard August 2020
We are currently working towards the Artsmark.
Please follow the links below if you wish to read more about the national curriculum.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum