Compton C.E. Primary School

Compton CE Primary

Curriculum Vison Statement

Our definition of learning:

‘Learning is a change in the long-term memory’

Our bible verse ‘Strong in spirit and full of wisdom’ and our three values: respect, kindness and courage underpin everything we do at Compton.

Alongside academic excellence, at Compton we want our children to grow to be kind, respectful and courageous people. We are proud to provide a nurturing environment where every child individual talents are celebrated. As a church school, spiritual development is central to our ethos, we encourage children to explore their own beliefs and as well and understanding and celebrating the beliefs of others. As a therapeutic school we believe pro social behaviour should be modelled and taught. We teach our children to be intrinsically motivated rather than relying on a rewards system.

Intent

The breadth of our curriculum is designed with three goals in mind:

1. To give pupils appropriate experiences to develop as confident, responsible citizens
2. To provide rich cultural capital
3. To provide a coherent, structured, academic curriculum that leads to sustained mastery for all and a greater depth learning to ensure all student achieve their potential

1. Appropriate Experiences

We have developed a curriculum that is underpinned by the school values of respect, kindness and courage. Our curriculum responds to the specific needs of our learners. We recognise that understanding and celebrating diversity is a key need of our learners, this therefore drives our curriculum design.

2. Cultural Capital

Cultural capital is the background knowledge of the world that pupils need to infer meaning from what they learn.

3.A coherently planned academic curriculum.

Our curriculum mapping documents set out:

• How the curriculum matched the National curriculum
• A clear list of the breadth of topics and concepts that will be covered.
• Key knowledge, skills and concepts students should understand
• Key vocabulary children should both know and be able to apply effectively for all subjects
• How new learning builds effectually on prior learning.
• Key milestones students should reach within each subject across the school. 

Implementation

Our curriculum design is based on evidence from cognitive science; three main principals underpin it:

• Learning is most effective with spaced repetition
• Interleaving (deliberately leaving and coming back to through beginning with exposure then keep returning and exploring further) helps students discriminate between topics and aids long term memory.
• Revival of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both its storage and retrieval strength.

In addition to the three principals we also understand that learning is invisible and that sustained mastery takes time

To secure this teachers will:

1. Be highly knowledgeable in relation to subject, pedagogical and pedagogical content knowledge  

2. Routinely check for misconceptions and adapt their approach, so that teaching is responsive to need 

3. Ensure students’ long-term retention and recall of subject knowledge 

4. Identify and prioritise the teaching of key and threshold concepts, embedding these within a broader schema of learning 

5. Use assessment to embed and use knowledge fluently, check understanding and inform teaching 

6. Set challenging work for students that supports the gradual accumulation of knowledge to enable deeper understanding and enhanced skill development 

7. Identify and incorporate opportunities to develop cross-curricular learning and careers education into planned lessons 

8. Identify and incorporate opportunities to develop communication skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening) into planned lessons 

9. Model high standards of communication skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening) 

10. Engage with high quality professional development, always seeking to further improve their teaching efficacy

Impact

The impact of our curriculum is that by the end of each year, the vast majority of students have sustained mastery of the content, that is, they remember it all, are fluent in it; some pupils have a greater depth of understanding. Pupils have developed a strong schema and key knowledge is understood and connected. We track carefully to ensure all students are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.

Diversity

Diversity underpins the entire school curriculum. Teachers actively seek opportunities to promote and celebrate diversity across the curriculum. This ensure all students have a secure understanding of protected characteristics and see: themselves, their culture, belifs represented in our school