Birdwell

Primary School

Curriculum Intent

Updated Sept 2019

Big ideas for little people

Primary School is a special time in life. Our aim is to provide our pupils with a fun, absorbing, challenging and exciting learning

experience; designed by us with the rigour and standards needed to provide breadth and depth in the curriculum.

The way we arrive at our curriculum is something we are very proud of at Birdwell…

Please visit our class BLOGs to see examples of planning and what

we have been learning about in our curriculum. Just scan the QR

code below to be taken to the relevant site.

Reception blog

Year 1 blog

Year 2 blog

Year 3 blog

Year 4 blog

Year 5 blog

Year 6 blog

Creating our curriculum outline

The Birdwell curriculum is topic based, as commonly found in schools across the country. What we believe makes our curriculum special is that a large proportion of the content is selected by our pupils each year and the whole school collaborate and work on the same topics at various intervals through-out the year. This has led to rich, cross-curricular outcomes that encompass the whole of our school community. It has provided collaborative links between classes and across Key Stages. It allowed us to illustrate the progression evident across our school, providing models of excellence for younger pupils and opportunity to coach and embed knowledge and skills they have learned for older pupils. We use the following process:

Out of the 6 half-herms in the school year, 3 are given to History and Geography topic drivers, chosen by our Humanities lead. This is to ensure clear, progressive coverage of the topics children are required to learn in the Humanities and to allow the knowledge and skills of each ‘topic’ to build on the ones covered in school prior. This leaves 3 half-terms available for teachers and children to choose topics that interest the pupils and deliver what the teacher feels they need.

1 half-term per year is used for a Whole School Topic. Staff begin by identifying their own unique spin on the theme for their year group. For example, if the topic is ‘Around the World’ we may see a teacher decide upon, ‘Around the World in the Lap of Luxury’ or ‘Around the world on a shoe-string’. Another may go for ‘Who lives Around the World?’ or ’Around the World in 80 meals’. This helps inject variety throughout the school and provide opportunity for teachers to match the topic to the objectives required by their year group.

The remaining 2 topics are chosen between the classroom teacher and the pupils. This is to ensure that classroom learning is fresh and relevant. We can respond to the needs and likes of the pupils as well as current affairs. The knowledge is embedded in pupils, throughout the school, that they will not just re-learn what classes before them have. They will get to cover topics and tasks that have never been done before. This echoes our ethos of promoting enquiry and genuine discovery in our curriculum. Teachers make the fact that they discover new information and skills explicit as well.

Cycle 1

Autumn 1 Autumn 2 Spring 1 Spring 2 Summer 1 Summer 2

History Topic 1

Whole School Topic

Geography Topic 1

Teacher’s Choice

History Topic 2

Children’s choice

Cycle 2

Autumn 1 Autumn 1 Autumn 1 Autumn 1 Autumn 1 Autumn 1

History Topic 3

Whole School Topic

Geography Topic 2

History Topic 4

Planning the curriculum Our curriculum Topics take the form of an enquiry. We don’t name topics with titles, such as ‘Greeks’, ‘Vikings’ or ‘Space’. Teachers collaborate together (in their paired Year Group teams) to create deeper, investigative approaches to topics, such as; ‘Would you rather have been an Athenian or a Spartan?’, ‘Could you survive the Stone age?’, ‘How did the Vikings shape England?’ or ‘Will humans ever live anywhere but Earth?’ This investigative approach allows us to encourage critical thinking skills (how does what I’ve learned support or contradict my opinion?) and also places value upon each curricular element in the topic. Our historical research helps understand the difference between the Athenians and Spartans and provide enough information for us to form our own opinion. Our scientific understanding of what living things need helps us to understand the ways Stone-Age man survived his environment. Similarly, artistic creations, musical productions, construction projects in D&T help create engagement and excitement for the topic and anchor learning to real-life experiences. The tying of learning to meaningful experience is our way of making the critical knowledge and skills we want the children to retain, memorable. It is much easier to explain the concept of evaporation if you have used it to separate hot chocolate powder from water to break an evil curse. It is easy to understand the principles of coding a computer game if your game raised money to pay for your school trip! We build up and re-visit the essential knowledge in each topic, deepening the understand of some aspects through the sequences we teach, until our pupils are equipped to use that knowledge in original, high-quality responses to the curriculum. The end unit of each topic is our Window to the World’. A chance for us to show how learning in the topic has relevance to the lives of our pupils and the World they see around them and in the news: The children read how the White Witch of Narnia is defeated and the 4 children take over the throne. We then lead into the fact that this is a Dictatorship that has been replaced by a ruling Monarchy. This is different to our own system of Democracy accompanied by a Constitutional Monarch. There are places in the world that have a Monarchy and places in which there is Dictatorship. We can see examples from History in which Dictators have been overthrown. We follow a very simple structure in planning each Topic and the units within it:

Critical knowledge Development (The bulk of the Topic)

The ‘Window to the World’

Emersion in the new topic

A lot of important information that will be covered in more detail

Frequently revisited to aid retention

Knowledge is pre-identified by teachers before the Topic begins

Key Topic ‘facts’ we expect all children to recall later

Deepen understanding of critical knowledge

Opportunity to apply skills & knowledge

Build links across the curriculum subjects

Engagement & enrichment of critical knowledge

Deeper thinking responses to the curriculum

How does what you have learned link to current affairs or our own lives?

Evaluation, is what we learned fair? Reliable? Biased?

Formulation of our own opinions and viewpoint on what we have learned

Coverage

The National Curriculum statements are arranged in to Objective Grids for each pair

of year groups to follow. As objectives are taught, they are highlighted on the grid.

Revisiting objectives and applying them in different contexts is central to our

approach. Each time an objective is revisited it will be in a different context and will

be applied in a different way, deepening understanding.

Each subject leader has created a Critical knowledge and skills map for their subject from EYFS to Year 6. This is to ensure that the knowledge & skills progression is planned across school by a well-informed teacher with a vision for the subject. Each subject progression is planned to ensure coverage of essential knowledge, build upon prior learning and revisit essential skills.

We provide our staff with paired planning time and also cover PPA time in pairs to encourage collaboration at the planning stage. The staff teams create a Topic Map for the half term. The Topic Map suggests units to be coved during the topic. These units always begin with a high-challenge question for the children to investigate. We expect each unit to incorporate a writing and maths element as well as a bias towards some of the Foundation subjects. Some units may be Science or Art heavy, some units may lend themselves more naturally to History or to Geography. Our objective grids help us ensure we are covering what we need to and identify gaps.

Individual units vary in length between a couple of days up to a couple of weeks. Each unit requires a Unit Plan to be written. Staff identify the teaching sequence; the most effective order to deliver the subjects and session in. This provides rich opportunities for cross-curricular links. Furthermore, this helps ensure that when the sessions are delivered to the children in class, the teacher can illustrate the links across sessions and subjects explicitly. This helps the metacognitive process of our pupils, helping them see how what they have learned has contributed to the unit, helping them identify future steps/learning required and giving value to what they are currently doing. Even small, typically under-valued elements (such as a SPaG skill, times table or handwriting session) can been seen as a vital part of succeeding in that unit.

In class, our children are reminded each session how what they have learned and what they are about to learn, fits together and contributes to meeting their challenge. Teachers emphasise links across subjects and learning, enhancing the metacognitive value of each session. There is frequent opportunity for collaboration (much more like real-life work situations) allowing pupils to contribute individual skills…giving value to the artists, musicians, programmers, scientists, managers, problems solvers and doers rather than just the writers and mathematicians. Teachers weave these subjects, knowledge and skills together in order to produce high quality outcomes. To produce something which the pupils could not have done to that standard before the unit and the teaching and learning they just participated in.

Contextualising the curriculum in this way provides rich opportunities for mastery of the curriculum objectives. The context requires application of skills and objectives, and each context will require this is a different way. Collaborative problem solving and reasoning encourages application of previously taught skills and knowledge and the opportunity to take learning & outcomes as far as the pupils are able.

Engagement Giving ownership of our curriculum to our pupils helps us choose topics and tasks that are

interesting to them. Ownership is a great way of creating responsibility for making units

succeed and inspiring pride in the outcomes.

We see the way the abstract way the majority of National Curriculum Objectives are written

as an invitation to create a very special curriculum all of our own. The statements in the

N.C. are a minimum expected standard in that subject, that is why we assess pupils who

achieve those statements as working at an expected level. The statements are a floor

standard for attainment not a ceiling and Birdwell primary School view this as an exciting

opportunity to take learning to a depth that challenges and engages our pupils regardless of

their ability. The lack of specificity in the objective means we can meet that objective at

that time in a unique, rich context, engaging and relevant to the children. Each time the

objective is revisited throughout the 2-year cycle will be in a new way and with a different

purpose.

“I enjoyed reading the story more than

when I’ve watched the movie” Kai Y3

“There’s loads to do…on Viking day, I learned I could be related to a Viking because of my hair!”

Grace Y6

“Learning about the past is like

today…there are still people

invading other countries” Thomas Y6

“Its made me

want to be a

scientist” India Y4

“It feels different {watching a Disney

movie} knowing how it is made” Aabritai Y1

Depth Our context based curriculum will often introduce pupils to knowledge and experiences that

they have never seen before. From this relatively level playing field of course, pupils will

progress at their own rate. By starting out with a high-challenge problem we provide an

opportunity for pupils to succeed far beyond the requirements of the curriculum’s minimum

expectations. The challenge questions that drive each unit are essentially adult level. This

provides a lot of room for development of knowledge, skills and understanding. As children

progress through their year and the school, they build a repertoire of responses they can

successfully use, such as accurate newspaper writing or the ability to create a line graph.

We offer increasing opportunity for pupils to select their own responses to learning, again,

allowing challenge to suit the pupil’s ability. Two pupils who differ greatly in ability can

respond to the same challenge in different ways that suit their required level of depth, skill,

format, independence and the level of scaffolding required. Collaborative group work can

be taken as high as the attainment of the highest ability pupil in the group whilst scaffolding

and support from peers and teachers helps the rest of the group push their own limits.

Filming stop-motion animations in Y6

Investigation if filtering can separate

an enchanted hot-chocolate solution

in Y4

Using tools & traditional building techniques

to construct Greek ships in Year 5

Making puppets from our story book

Excellence

Sessions always include models of excellence for the children to experience. We help them

analyse the processes and skills required to reach these outcomes and even to appreciate

why they are special examples. Modelling of excellence does not always happen at the

beginning of a lesson. Whilst an inspiring starting point is a hook in to learning we do often

use we also use alternative strategies, including:

Have a go yourself and compare yours to the model, how can it improve?

Teacher creates a model of excellence step by step, the children have a go at

replicating each step

Peer review and feedback

Research and discover your own model of excellence

Use previous examples created by yourself or your peers as models of excellence.

Year 5 designed, programmed & built working arcade machines. They charged parents & pupils 10p per play & raised enough money to pay for a trip to the National Videogame Museum! The staff at the museum were blown away with what the children had done and even opened up one of their machines to shoe the pupils that they were built in exactly the same way as we had done. They also showed how the code works in some famous arcade games.

Year 4 had to make their own outfit and shelter to see if they could have survived in the Stone Age

Access Birdwell Primary School aim to provide an absorbing, enjoyable, stimulating and challenging learning experience for all pupils regardless of starting point, ability and impairment. The motivation behind the curriculum we have created is to allow our pupils to respond to the challenges set to the most appropriate level for them. Our staff have the responsibility to ensure progress for all pupils, regardless of grouping. Our teaching assistants are used to strategically target groups who require scaffolding and support to meet out challenges or push themselves to excel. These groupings are fluid depending upon the task. We do not use teaching assistants as ‘baby sitters’ for the same pupils over and over again. Educational visits enrich and support the curriculum

All pupils in Y5 learn to play a brass instrument. Here they are playing for the Lord Mayor at the Barnsley Music

Services concert at the Metrodome

Practical

Practical sessions, using concrete apparatus underpin teaching for all pupils