Curriculum Intent

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A knowledge rich curriculum that embeds procedural and semantic knowledge.

“Learning is a change to Long Term Memory”

At Marsden Junior School we aim to provide an ambitious and conceptionally rich curriculum that is relevant, challenging and engaging for every child. It is clear what end points the curriculum is building towards and what pupils need to know and be able to do to reach those end points. The curriculum reflects the school’s local context by addressing typical gaps in pupils’ knowledge and skills. Currently, curriculum planning accounts for delays and gaps in learning that arise as a result of the pandemic.

We commit to immersing the children in a wide range of creative contexts that inspire engagement, excitement and a love of learning. These learning experiences will be purposeful and designed to connect with local and global concepts. The ability to learn is underpinned by the teaching of basic skills, knowledge, concepts and values. We provide a curriculum that values and supports emotional and social growth, enriched by spiritual, moral, social and cultural themes and the curriculum is designed to give all learners the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life in modern Britain. These themes will inform creative, enquiry led learning experiences throughout every child’s learning adventure at Marsden Junior School. We constantly provide enhancement opportunities to engage learning and believe that childhood should be a happy, investigative and enquiring time in our lives, where there are no limits to curiosity and there is a thirst for new experiences and knowledge. We provide a safe and inclusive environment that will maximise the potential of each child.

Every child is recognised as a unique individual and we celebrate and welcome differences within our school community. Community involvement is an essential part of our curriculum as we celebrate local traditions and learn new skills to enable the children to take an active role in events throughout the year.

Our values of Respect, Integrity, Teamwork and Aspiration (RITA) underpin and promote positive attitudes to learning. These reflect the fundamental British Values and skills needed to promote responsibility for learning and future success.

Children leave the school ready for their next stage. In addition, they have a sense of belonging to a supportive community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections and become lifelong learners.

Implementation

At Marsden Junior School, our curriculum is delivered over a 2-year rolling cycle. The schema is connected by key concepts; these concepts are integral to our curriculum and are explored and built on throughout the school. The careful sequencing of our curriculum exposes the children to these concepts in a wide-breadth of contexts to achieve thresholds. Concepts are revisited throughout a forward and backwards engineered curriculum allowing the children to build a broad and deep conceptual understanding. We expose children to authors, artists, musicians etc. and make sure that learning is made memorable and committed to the long-term memory by repeating concepts, making links and building upon previous learning. We exploit every opportunity in all subjects to develop our children’s language acquisition and expose our children daily to challenging new vocabulary. Since we believe that reading opens the door for every child to succeed, we are determined that every child, by the end of their time at Marsden Junior School will have a lifelong love of reading, and will be able to comprehend and read fluently. Class teachers are responsible for planning the curriculum for their class. They make decisions about what resources and materials they use, and how they differentiate them appropriately. They do this using their professional knowledge and expertise, sharing best practice and providing support for each other, focussed on outcomes for individual pupils.

Subject leaders and senior leaders are responsible for designing the progression in core knowledge, skills and concepts into year group plans. They ensure that all teachers are familiar with curriculum expectations through training, monitoring and coaching, with a focus on ensuring that outcomes can be achieved by all pupils.

Impact

The impact and measure of our curriculum is to ensure children not only acquire the appropriate age-related knowledge linked to the curriculum but also skills which equip them to progress from their starting points. In shaping our curriculum this way, progress is measured and evidenced for all children, regardless of their starting points or specific needs. Enjoyment of the curriculum promotes achievement, confidence and excellent behaviour. Mental health and well-being is supported enabling confident, successful learners and active community members. Class teachers routinely evaluate the progress of pupils within and across lessons using the curriculum frameworks to make judgements. They use this information to analyse how effectively pupils are achieving or exceeding expectations and to adapt their planning accordingly. Teachers provide Subject Leaders with timely summative information about the outcomes of pupils in their class.

Subject Leaders and Senior Leaders routinely evaluate the summative outcomes for their area of responsibility. They use this analysis to identify any necessary actions that develop the quality of provision in their subject, to moderate assessments, and to benchmark outcomes against expectations beyond their school.

Reading

At Marsden Junior School, our aim is for every child to become a fluent reader. This is necessary in order for them to reach age related expectations or make accelerated progress from their starting point. As well as this, we want children to develop a love for reading and read for pleasure on a regular basis. It is our intent at Marsden Junior School to provide pupils with a high-quality education in English that will teach pupils to speak, read and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others effectively.

Our curriculum is designed around the needs of the pupils in our school and there are a variety of approaches to enable the pupils to make good progress.

The aims of teaching reading in our school are to develop pupils who:

show high levels of achievement and exhibit very positive attitudes towards reading;
rapidly acquire a secure knowledge of letters and sounds and make sustained progress in learning to read fluently (excellent phonic knowledge and skills);
read easily and fluently with good understanding across both fiction and non-fiction;
acquire a wider grasp of extensive and vocabulary;
participate in the teaching of phonics knowledge, skills and understanding in a systematic and enjoyable way;
develop their reading in all subjects to support their acquisition of knowledge;
develop a love of reading;
read for pleasure both at home and school on a regular basis;
through their reading develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually;
develop good comprehension drawing from their linguistic knowledge.

Homework

We expect pupils to work very hard during every lesson, to listen intently, to question, to reason, to reflect and to respond appropriately. It is this interaction with the teacher that helps to produce good progress in learning. We know that many parents share our view about the importance of developing ‘the whole child’ through extra-curricular activities and out of school pursuits. We believe that it is important to ensure that any additional academic work from school should not prevent pupils from widening their interests into sport, music and clubs. However, regular, additional work at home can reinforce skills through short, regular ‘bursts’ of practice, usually with an adult.

Key Stage 2 pupils have a homework diary/planner, in order that they can take ownership of their school work and to allow parents/pupils/Teachers an ongoing dialogue. A homework club also operates one lunchtime a week in school, with Teachers available to provide assistance. Parents are encouraged to contact school if they have any concerns or questions about the work given to be done at home either personally or by telephone.

Curriculum