About Our Curriculum

WHAT WE DO AT ARCHBISHOP HUTTON’S

At Archbishop Hutton’s, our pupils to have big ambitions and high expectations of themselves. We are an outward looking school, with a strong sense of our place in the local community and to that end we have created a curriculum that truly meets the needs of our children.

Our exciting curriculum is driven by our children and enables each child to develop academically, emotionally, creatively, socially and physically.

Our curriculum enables the children to share ideas, express their opinions and apply what they have learned in a wide range of meaningful contexts. It offers opportunities for all children to investigate, question, debate and challenge. We expect our pupils to be active learners, questioning, investigating, challenging themselves and sharing responsibility for driving their own learning. These qualities needed for successful learning are underpinned by our focus on independence, inquisitiveness and resilience.

HOW WE DO IT

At the heart of our curriculum are the core subjects of English, Mathematics & Science. What we teach and learn in these areas is then developed further in our wider curriculum work.

This wider curriculum is organised into units of learning or themes. Meaningful links are made with other subjects, securing prior learning and develop learning further. It is planned and taught through carefully sequenced lessons where the critical content of each subject is covered so every child can gain a deep understanding. There is a focus on key vocabulary, which will be covered in the theme and which will enrich the children’s understanding as a whole.

The learning is planned, reviewed and adapted yearly to ensure that children’s knowledge base builds effectively over time to ultimately ensure they are ready to meet the expectations of secondary school.

This knowledge has three main aspects:

• Substantive Knowledge – Key Facts and Figures
• Procedural Knowledge – the development to skills and techniques
• Disciplinary Knowledge – the ability to apply the substantial and procedural knowledge to

develop their own learning, enquiries and bodies of work

Where possible, learning will be supported and enriched by field study, visits, visitors, workshops, artefact boxes, role-play and practical resources.

These enhancements form a key part of every child’s learning journey through our school and we believe they are essential elements in developing engaged, curious learners.

WHAT WE PROVIDE

• A stimulating environment for developing inquisitive, independent and resilient lifelong learners who work hard and strive for excellence.
• A culture of working independently and collaboratively, where we see getting something wrong as part of learning how to get it right
• A safe place where all children are encouraged and supported.
• Engaging learning where enquiry and challenge are fully embraced to open the world up to all.
• Exciting opportunities to promote our children's personal development and understanding of their own emotional and physical wellbeing.

 

HOW WE MONITOR UNDERSTANDING AND PROGRESS

Across a theme we use various assessment techniques. These help us understand what the child knows at the start of a theme, how their learning is developing and how their learning has moved on over the course of the theme.

The methods we use are:

Diagnostic Assessments

Diagnostic assessments serve as a barometer for how much pre-loaded information a student has about a topic. This type of assessment helps to tell the teacher (and the student) how much they know and don’t know about an upcoming topic. This helps to inform the teacher’s lesson planning, learning objectives, and identify areas that may need more or less time spent on.

• Happen at the beginning of a unit, lesson, quarter, or period of time.
• Goal of understanding student’s current position to inform effective instruction
• Identify strengths and areas of improvement for the student

Formative Assessments

The main intent of formative assessment is to gather insight about student learning during a unit to track student progress and inform instruction.

• These are low-stakes assessments
• They help the teacher gain insight on how learning is progressing
• Helps to identify knowledge retention and understanding
• They may happen daily or weekly
• Usually occur at the end of a session – or at the start of the next
• Generally short and quick checks – maybe a quiz or a quick Q and A

Summative Assessments      

Summative assessments document how much information was retained at the end of a designated period of learning.

• We use these to evaluate learning/understanding at the end of a checkpoint
• Normally help to determine students’ levels of attainment and progress
• Used for accountability of schools, students, and teachers

For the foundation subjects that make up our curriculum, these assessments are informal in nature. They may take the form of a class discussion, a KWL grid or a quiz based on the critical knowledge and vocabulary found in our knowledge organisers.

Teachers then record those children who are working below or above the expected level on their medium-term plans. These records are later used to inform end of term reporting.

After a theme has been completed, staff moderate work recorded in books at a teacher meeting. Staff look at progression of skills across each year group and also across the school as a whole.

After a theme, subject leaders interview groups of children about what they have learnt, making links to previous learning in other areas. These assessment opportunities are fed back to all staff and are another helpful tool in the planning, teaching and learning process.

For English and Maths work, termly formal assessments are undertaken to assess the children’s attainment and progress. We make use of the White Rose assessments in Maths and Rising Stars assessments in Reading and GPS. Year Six teachers use past SAT papers to gauge levels of progress and attainment across the year. 

When returning to the next or similar theme we make links to previous learning, using past assessments to inform our teaching.

THE IMPACT FOR THE CHILDREN AT ARCHBISHOP HUTTON’S

From their different starting points, all children make good progress academically, emotionally, creatively, socially and physically.

Knowledge, understanding and skills are secured and embedded so that children attain highly and are fully prepared for secondary school.

Our children have strong communication skills, both written and verbal. They listen respectfully and with tolerance to the views of others. They take pride in all that they do, always striving to do their best.

Our children demonstrate emotional resilience and the ability to persevere when they encounter challenge. They develop a sense of self-awareness and become confident in their own abilities.

They are kind, respectful and honest young people who demonstrate inclusive attitudes and have a sense of their role in our wider society.

 

HOW OUR LEARNING IS ADAPTED TO ENSURE EVERYONE ACHIEVES AND MAKES PROGRESS

We understand that a child’s area of need may change throughout their school journey. 

Some children’s levels of need (especially those with a diagnosed condition) will mean that they have special educational needs for their entire school career. 

Others may have fluctuating or isolated needs. For example, putting in place an intervention to improve gross motor skills in the early years could lead to issues being successfully addressed, bringing skills back in line with age expectations. 

We know that many of the ways we support our children with SEN are simply an extension of our good practice in the classroom. However, often more specific strategies may be particularly useful in supporting particular needs.

Therefore, when we plan lessons we:

• Ensure tasks are effectively differentiated and ambitious in their outcomes for all students. Organise work for learners with SEN in smaller chunks with plenty of opportunities for revisiting and over learning, where appropriate. This might involve smaller follow-up tasks.
• Use technology where appropriate to scaffold the learner. This may include equipment, apps, or specialist software which can effectively support SEN. 
• Deploy other adults in the classroom to effectively facilitate learning.
• Incorporate flexible grouping – do not always group children with similar SEN together; allow them to learn from their peers.
• Plan in the use of talk partners – this gives children with SEN access to peer support and the ability to rehearse their responses.

We always ensure that our communication with the children we teach is appropriate and is adapted both when spoken and written in order to support all children.

When we communicate with our classes we:

• Keep instructions clear and concise.
• Deliver instructions facing the children.
• Don’t issue multiple instructions at once.
• Give children an opportunity to repeat instructions back to a peer or adult.
• Accompany verbal instructions with visual aids for those who need it.
• Allocate other adults (or peers) to re-word and re-frame instructions and information for those with Speech, Language and Communication needs.
• Verbalise our thought process whilst modelling activities, including strategies to remember what you need to do.

We complement our high-quality teaching with small group and one-to-one interventions

Often, we have learners in our classes who need to access particular interventions in order to fulfil their potential, in addition to the high-quality whole-class teaching that we are providing.

Inventions are allocated for a pre-agreed period of time, accompanied by measurable goals, and regularly evaluated. 

All teachers to produce a provision plan detailing the interventions that are taking place within the class. This is adapted regularly.

All learners have a statutory right to a broad and balanced curriculum, so we take care to ensure that those children with SEN are not consistently removed from the same lessons for interventions. 

We understand that children can experience both academic and social barriers due to their SEN, meaning that they are unable to reach their personal potential.

Without proper support or accommodations in place, those barriers could manifest in anxiety, disengagement, and frustration, sometimes resulting in challenging behaviours within school. 

These could include:

• Withdrawn behaviours, including expressing anxiety, school phobia, truancy, and social isolation.
• Disruptive behaviours, such as calling out in class, angry outbursts, swearing, screaming, or refusing to follow instructions.
• Violent and/or unsafe behaviours such as physically harming themselves or others, running away, and damaging property.

There could also be changes to a child’s needs on occasion of a change in circumstances – ie: children experiencing grief or with other social, emotional and mental health needs. In these cases, staff would adapt their approach appropriately.

It is therefore key to our commitment to helping all of our children to achieve their true potential that we make learning accessible to all and achievement and progress attainable for everyone.

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Teaching follows a two year rolling programme (Long Term Curriculum Plan) alternating between the Curriculum Plans for Year A  and Year B.

In this way, we ensure that all children are taught the full range of subjects in the National Curriculum learning what is expected within each specific subject. You can find out more by looking through the long term plan in addition to both the curriculum newsletters and medium term plans that teachers publish half-termly on their class pages.

Below, you can access Year A and Year B of our Curriculum. You can see how each subject area is covered and linked. Reception parents can also see their child's curriculum in more detail. The blue Curriculum Knowledge tab of our homepage will show the knowledge covered in each of our 12 themes. 

Please take time to visit the pages for each of our subjects.

 

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