Our Interconnected Hallbrook Curriculum

Intent:

Hallbrook Primary School has a curriculum that aims to support both academic achievement and personal development to prepare our children for their next stage in education and become valuable members of our community and modern-day Britain.

Our curriculum is built around the objects which are set out in the EYFS framework and the National Curriculum for all subjects from year 1 to year 6. Hallbrook also follows the locally agreed syllabus for Religious Education.

Our school curriculum has been designed and selected to provide pupils with a clear, progressive framework of skills, knowledge and vocabulary that builds sequentially each year. We use a blend of bespoke curriculums which have been designed for our pupils and adapted schemes based on the design of subject expertise.

We follow an interconnected curriculum model where all lessons and learning intentions play their role in creating a strong understanding of the full Hallbrook curriculum.

The theory behind our curriculum is well represented by the diagram of children building upon the knowledge of previous lessons and year groups and different subject areas slotting together to build a stronger structure.

The curriculum has been designed to include key threads within subjects that educate children on important local and global issues.

As a proud member of Success Academy Trust, our curriculum shares the intents of:

Attainment and Success for all.

Creating Leaders.

Building Character.

Supporting children to live a physically and mentally healthy life.

Implementation:

Hallbrook Primary School follows a research-informed approach to how we deliver the curriculum. These are guided by Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction, Cognitive load theory and Bloom’s taxonomy of learning.

Cognitive load theory highlights the need for timely retrieval of information for it to be embedded in the long-term memory and how teachers deliver the curriculum content in a way that reduces demand on pupils.

The interconnected curriculum design and use of retrieval activities at different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy helps pupils to secure knowledge and provide more mental capacity to their working memory.

Topic unit covers provide a reminder to children about the content that is covered in each unit alongside dual coding of the key vocabulary allows children of all abilities to use the vocabulary correctly in lessons.

We have taken the deliberate decision to not tie different units together into themes or larger topics. This is so children can focus on the substantive and disciplinary knowledge of specific curriculum areas. Instead of links being drawn around themes, children are taught to link their learning based on the knowledge and skills they have previously learnt. This can be from within the same subject area but also recognise that a variety of curriculum areas have interconnected knowledge.

Teachers understand the importance of live modelling within the curriculum. In many curriculum areas, the “I do, We do, You do,” approach is used to allow pupils opportunities to practise and learn from expert input.

The school uses an adaptive teaching approach to make sure all learners can access the curriculum. This is about providing equity to pupils in the opportunity to learn. Children are given the scaffolds and resources needed to allow them to improve. This allows us to deliver a mastery curriculum model where all pupils have the opportunity to be challenged and stretched.

Impact:

The impact of our curriculum can be best seen in the body of skills and knowledge that our pupils accumulate over time. Pupils who can engage in high-quality discussion, can question, understand broad concepts and make links in their learning whilst having the skills to produce an excellent standard of work is our desired output.

Staff measure pupils' progress towards this through a range of frequent formative assessments, as mentioned above. Teaching staff have an informed overview of their class, knowing when to move learning on or when further direct teaching is needed to ensure that all pupils are achieving their objective. Additional support and interventions are used successfully to support whole class teaching.

Pupils' progress is discussed termly between class teachers and key members of staff. Such meetings not only provide opportunities to analyse and evaluate the progress of individuals and groups but also to offer guidance in order to maximise learning opportunities within our curriculum.

Senior leaders and curriculum coordinators monitor the curriculum through book looks, pupil interviews, classroom observations and analysis of internal data. Teacher judgements are shared at the end of the year with new class teachers as part of our transition process.

Curriculum coordinators provide an annual report on their subject, evaluating its effectiveness and our pupils’ success within it. These enable us to identify any amendments that may be necessary to ensure that the flow of our curriculum and links within it are as valuable as possible.

Development and monitoring of our curriculum is a whole school process during which every age group and subject is closely scrutinised by senior leaders, subject coordinators and class teachers. Through this shared knowledge of best practice, we can achieve a curriculum that develops children’s skills, values and knowledge over their time with us in the most effective way.