Welcome to our curriculum
Intent
At Hyde Park Junior School, our vision is to be an inclusive school where all children feel safe, loved, challenged in their learning and are respectable role models for other children. We are determined to achieve our mission, which is to prepare all our children for the next phase of their academic journey whilst enabling them to contribute positively to their communities.
We have designed our curriculum to provide the best learning opportunities for all our children to be curious learners. The curriculum we deliver is aligned to the National Curriculum, whilst incorporating Programmes of Studies that meet the needs of our children as identified by staff. Our curriculum is ambitious and designed to give all learners the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.
The curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced to provide our learners with the knowledge and skills needed for future learning and the next phase in their education. We understand that a child’s ability to learn is based on gaining knowledge and building on learned knowledge, as well as the ability to use and apply any associated skills adeptly and competently.
We believe that reading is a fundamental life skill and therefore reading is prioritised across the schools, whilst building seamlessly on the foundations provided by our partner infant school. Children are enabled to express themselves creatively and imaginatively as they become enthusiastic and critical readers. It is our intention to ensure that all pupils read widely and confidently with fluency and comprehension at least appropriate to their age.
Our curriculum is designed to marry these key components to ensure progress and a greater depth of understanding that leads to sustained mastery. We do not narrow our curriculum but ensure that children receive a broad and balanced curriculum, and that learning is relevant, exciting, aspirational, and challenging. All subjects within our curriculum are viewed as drivers and are underpinned by the understanding that basic literacy and numeracy competency is vital in all learning.
The children are encouraged to believe in themselves. We have the same ambitions for all learners: to be the very best they can be. The curriculum is designed to make children intrinsically motivated over time and therefore be in charge of their own learning journey. This will be achieved through careful consideration of individual needs, and, in some cases, individual programmes of study based around the needs of the children.
All learners study the full curriculum, which is broad and balanced, and which aims to provide our children with a wide range of experiences. We have further enhanced our programme using the school’s core values which are ‘lived’ daily through our relationships and school ethos.
We are determined to provide the best educational opportunities for all children at Hyde Park Junior School.
Implementation
High quality CPD and a commitment to learning from research and best practice lie at the heart of our curriculum implementation. Staff at every level are provided with extensive opportunities to develop their own subject knowledge and pedagogy to ensure the curriculum can be delivered effectively with maximum impact.
Vocabulary is taught explicitly and effectively across subjects and cross curriculum vocabulary is explored where applicable. Learning is made accessible to all, by clear coverage of prior knowledge and learning and, within each lesson, consistent scaffolding, chunking of new learning, opportunities for talk and feedback. Opportunities for depth are provided through questioning, reasoning, depth tasks and reading beyond the curriculum.
Formative assessment is used routinely within lessons, in order to address children’s misconceptions. Summative assessments are used termly to track how pupils are progressing against the curriculum. Lessons allow pupils to practise our core values within their learning being brave, curious, optimistic, kind, inclusive, enterprising, and confident learners.
The curriculum provides children with deep learning experiences that are built on year on year across our schools, providing children with a chronological understanding of how events fit together. Repetition also plays an important role in securing knowledge. Therefore, knowledge is often revisited in subjects across the school to allow the knowledge to become sticky. The curriculum provides diverse and rich opportunities from which children can learn and develop a range of transferable skills. Every term, the children have one of three enrichment experiences. Examples include an expert, enrichment or experience all used to gain further knowledge to what has already been taught within the classroom.
We feel it is important to use the children’s own communities, heritage and traditions as a starting point for engaging interest. Our curriculum incorporates strong links to our rich geographical and historical areas, whilst providing children with the opportunities to reach out to a wide range of cultures and communities globally. As stated by Facer 2009, “…by creating rich connections with the communities, cities and cultures that surround them and by distributing the education effort across the people, organisations and institutions of a local area...” we want children to leave our school with a sense of belonging to a community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections, and become lifelong learners.
Impact
Pupils leave Hyde Park Schools with a secure understanding of the knowledge and skills learned; with the understanding of how to be socially, morally, spiritually, and culturally responsible and are globally aware; how to make positive contributions to the community and how to endeavour to be the best that they can be.
Progress in reading is important and provides children with life skills, which then promotes reading for pleasure and enjoyment.
We aim for all our children to leave The Hyde Park Schools: brave, curious, optimistic, kind, enterprising, inclusive, and confident learners, with the motivation and passion to continue to learn and with a thirst for Modern British life and all it has to offer.