Hawkshead Esthwaite Primary School
Curriculum design statement: intent, implementation, impact.

Intent

The breadth of our curriculum is designed with two goals in mind:
1) To give pupils appropriate experiences to develop as confident, responsible citizens;
2) To provide a coherent, structured academic curriculum that leads to sustained mastery for all and a greater depth of understanding for those who are capable.

Appropriate experiences

We have developed four curriculum drivers that shape our curriculum, bring about the aims and values of our school, and to respond to the particular needs of the community.

Enquiry and Inspiration:
Opportunity:
Literature:
Enterprise:

A coherently planned academic curriculum

Underpinned by our school values (including British values), curriculum drivers, learning habits, our academic curriculum uses either the EYFS or the National Curriculum as the basis for content and expectations. We have structured this so that each year group has:
a) A clear list of what must be covered (curriculum map)
b) The ‘threshold concepts’ pupils should understand (Essentials Curriculum key objectives).
c) Criteria for progression within the threshold concepts (Essential Curriculum Milestones).

The diagram below shows the model of our curriculum structure:

Curriculum maps for each year group ensures each teacher has clarity as to what to cover. Threshold concepts are the key disciplinary aspect of each subject that will shape pupils as, for example, historians, geographers etc. Milestones define the standards for the threshold concepts. Finally, we expect pupils in year 1 of the milestone to develop a Basic (B) understanding and sometimes Advancing (A) and an Advancing or Deep (D) understanding in Year 2 of the milestone.

Implementation

Our curriculum design is based on evidence from cognitive science; three main principles underpin it:
1) Learning is most effective when spaced rather than blocked.
2) Interleaving helps pupils to discriminate between topics and aids long-term retention
3) Retrieval of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength.

In addition to the three principles we also understand that learning is invisible in the short-term and that sustained mastery takes time.

Some of our content is subject specific, whilst other content is combined in a cross-curricular approach. Continuous provision, in the form of daily routines, replaces the teaching of some aspects of the curriculum and , in other cases, provides retrieval practise for previously learned content.

Impact

The impact of our curriculum is that by the end of each Milestone, the vast majority of pupils have sustained mastery of the content, that is, they remember it all and are fluent in it; Some pupils have greater depth of understanding. We track carefully to ensure pupils are on track to reach expectations of our curriculum.