Dear Lord,
Please bless us all,
Help us to care for one another and to forgive one another,
To play and work well together,
Help us to be thankful and always to remember the love of Christ and spread his love wherever we go.
Amen
At Cottingham C of E Primary School we aim to teach an ambitious, high quality and enriching curriculum that will prepare our students with the knowledge and skills for their future learning and employment, ensuring that they are role-models in our society, using our School mission of Care, Build, Follow and Think along with our school Christian values.
In our school, the curriculum is broadly defined as the knowledge students are expected to learn (including spiritual, moral, social and cultural) through the totality of experiences provided in our children’s primary schooling. By knowledge we mean facts, concepts and rules (declarative knowledge: to know that…), and procedural knowledge (to know how….) acquired through experience and /or education.
The curriculum lies at the heart of education in Cottingham C of E Primary School. It therefore determines what our learners will become, what they will know and understand, and what they will be able to do by the time they leave.
Bearing in mind the definition of knowledge above, we aim for our knowledge-rich curriculum to enable:
We deliver the National Curriculum 2014 throughout Key Stage 1 and 2 providing pupils with ‘an introduction to the essential knowledge that they need to be educated citizens and to the best that has been thought and said, helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement’.
We regard the curriculum as the progression model. We focus on knowledge progression mainly through subject specific models within the context of themes or topics. Hence, our long term aim is for our curriculum to be coherently planned, organised and structured with key concepts identified and prioritised, built upon and revisited.
Staff work collaboratively to create a rich curriculum, centred around experiences that will challenge and excite the children and also focus upon the knowledge and skills that will be required- this will give the children a diverse set of learning guides who help to inspire a love of learning in all of our children. Pupils will take an active part in planning the curriculum to ensure that it is relevant to them and engaging.
Whilst we ensure that there is a broad and rich curriculum, we prioritise and regard the mastering of foundational knowledge as crucial in the younger years. Reading and vocabulary development is an integral part of our curriculum. We aim to develop Tier 1, 2 and 3 vocabulary (Isabel Beck 2002). Pupils from all backgrounds, including those who are disadvantaged, are provided with the tools to access a broad curriculum within a language rich environment.
We also aim for our curriculum to develop attitudes, attributes and dispositions which enable our children to:
Our curriculum reflects our local needs and context. The curriculum meets the particular aims and values of our school in a number of ways. As part of all aspects of our curriculum, we ensure that there are links made to our local area in as many ways as possible, both through the content of the curriculum that is taught and also through the activities that take place in all classes within the school. The local area and its history was forefront of our minds when designing our long-term curriculum map and links were established wherever possible. We also have designed our curriculum to reflect our Christian community, using our Christian values across all areas of our curriculum, linking these values to the themes studied alongside our daily worship time. British values are taught explicitly and we also teach a full programme of PHSE, with the intent of ensuring that our children are productive and happy members of the various communities in which they do and will live.
‘Learning is defined as an alteration in long-term memory. If nothing has been altered in long-term memory then nothing has been learned.’
Sweller et al. 2011
In line with cognitive load theory we aim, through our teaching, to develop understanding by building well-developed schema: well organised, connected knowledge as opposed to a handful of unconnected facts. We, therefore, favour spaced and distributed learning, where knowledge is rehearsed for short periods over a longer period of time. We aim to ensure retrieval practice is built in to strengthen memory by:
We regard teaching as effective when underpinned by Rosenshine’s ‘Principles of Instruction’. Effective questioning, effective use of formative assessment and adaptive, responsive teaching are regarded as key.
Our curriculum is designed to be taught through a series of learning quests. These are a series of meaningful, linked and interesting lessons that are planned (flexibly) to enable the children to learn new skills, consolidate existing learning, all heading for a shared meaningful learning destination. Children are aware of their quest from the start of each quest and are shown how the lessons that are being taught will help them to achieve their learning destination at the end of the quest. Learning quests are created through discussion with the children, assessment of prior knowledge and creative thinking on the part of the teacher (their Guide).
LEARNING QUESTS are created based on the following beliefs re: learning:
This is a challenging learning outcome activity that the children will want to achieve, which is relevant, interesting and also the next step in their development. All children have the right to reach the destination. These learning destinations are shared across the school with all members of our learning community including the children's parents.
This is a planned map of the possible route(s) the children will take to reach the destination. This map will contain a variety of different stages (lessons) depending on what is being learnt at that time in the quest. There is always flexibility in the map to incorporate the children’s interest, misconceptions or assessment of their progress towards the destination. The routes on the map will be changed (and even personalised) in order to ensure ALL children will reach the destination.
These are adults that guide the children during their quests. Great guides will use an extensive range of techniques to guide the children to ensure they all reach the destination. You will see, during the learning quests, guides instructing, questioning, feeding back, modelling, challenging and giving appropriate support (FEEDBACK) Guides may also give some children extra guidance if they are struggling with the quest or struggling with basic skills needed to reach the destination.
These are skills the children will develop and use during their learning quests, these skills will include resilience, team work, communication and problem solving.
These are the key principles that guide our teaching of each learning quest:
We measure this by the extent to which our aims, curriculum defined end points and strong outcomes are achieved as a result of our curriculum intent and implementation.
The vast majority of our pupils will have sustained mastery of key, detailed knowledge identified and some children will have a greater depth of understanding.
‘If a student has learnt the curriculum, they have made progress.’
Michael Fordham
Leadership of the curriculum is distributed. Subject leaders are given the autonomy to lead on their specific subject curriculum within the shared vision and accountability framework of the school.
During National Lockdown and where children/staff are self isolating, remote learning will be offered. It is expected that all children will access the remote learning that includes both 'live' and recorded teaching sessions.
Parents InformationIf you are unable to find the information that you require in the many documents found in the 'Our Curriculum,' section of the website, please do contact the school for further information. Faye Wason (Curriculum Lead) f.wason@cottingham.pdet.org.uk Ashley Scott (Headteacher) head@cottingham.pdet.org.uk If you would like to find out information regarding a particular subject, please contact the school office for staff contact details.