Curriculum Intent

 

Challenge - Inspire – Prepare

Curriculum Intent

Our curriculum provides all children with the opportunity to develop a breadth of skills and knowledge that nourish a strong sense of self-belief.  We are a community where high expectations are set for all.  Our aim is to challenge, inspire and prepare our pupils so that they are motivated to accomplish their goals in education and beyond, with a readiness to thrive in our rapidly changing world.  

We lead pupils towards clear destinations and ensure that they are provided with the opportunity to explore a series of precisely planned, sequenced and interconnected moments that explore what it is to learn and gain a deep understanding in all subjects. We achieve this through deliberate connections across subjects and low stakes opportunities to recall their learning, intertwined into our teaching to ensure key knowledge and skills reach pupils’ long term memory.

At Auriol, we understand the importance of building children’s vocabulary, the pivotal role it plays in unlocking access to the whole curriculum, and through our ambitious reading curriculum, we strive to ensure that all children have a chance to experience rich and diverse language.

We believe that getting to know every individual pupil and their interests enables us to develop the children’s strengths inside and outside of the classroom.  At Auriol, we place importance on our whole curriculum, developing pupils’ resilience, supporting well-being and an understanding of tolerance and diversity in our community.   We are extremely proud of our wide range of extracurricular activities and place great value on the opportunities for all pupils.

Curriculum Implementation

We place great importance on our staff’s professional development and we invest in them so that they can deliver consistent quality first teaching and become confident architects of pupils’ learning.  Collaborative lesson studies, action learning sets and regular ‘learning reflections’ focus on the quality of the children's experience in our classrooms.

Each year group and subject area have curriculum overviews that map out the knowledge and skills progression of our curriculum offer, these include all the subjects in the National Curriculum, so that our children receive a broad and balanced offer.  Alongside this, our ‘Mastery Matrix’ development allows teachers to precisely plan learning for every subject and ensure coherent coverage of key knowledge, skills and concepts and clear progression routes over a sequence of lessons.

We believe prior learning needs to be systematically built upon, key knowledge needs to be revisited and across the curriculum, we create regular opportunities for long term memory recall with meaningful cross-curricular links to ensure transferable knowledge. Planning is supported by subject progression documents so that lessons give children the opportunity to use and apply the skills they are developing so that they know more and understand more.

Across the curriculum, children are given regular opportunities to enquire, explore, question, investigate, evaluate, and reflect on their learning. These crucial experiences strengthen children’s subject knowledge and embed life-long skills.

A range of visits or visitors into school enhance each theme and are organised by teachers to offer a range of experiences that will help to broaden understanding of curriculum content, enrich the curriculum delivery with real-life experiences and most importantly, help the children embed and retrieve their learning.

The role of the subject leader is pivotal in the successful implementation of our curriculum. We aim for all subject leaders to have the knowledge, expertise and practical skill to be able to lead their area effectively. Working with SLT, other professionals both in the trust and in Surrey, they are responsible for the curriculum design, delivery and impact in their own curriculum area.  Subject leaders and leaders at all levels, including Governors, regularly review and quality assure the subject areas to ensure that they are being implemented as intended and that coverage, curriculum, breadth and balance is adequate.

Curriculum Impact

To ensure we measure the impact of our curriculum, we carefully formulate regular low stakes assessments of prior knowledge as a starting point for all future planning and teaching. Purposeful distance marking by classroom teachers means that we can create guided groups and carefully tailored lessons which enable all groups of pupils to make good progress and catch up quickly, if needed. Teaching staff also make use of the detailed progression documents to assist with making accurate periodic judgements of pupil attainment and progress for all taught subjects. Alongside this, our subjects use a range of exciting and purposeful end points that allow for assessment and engage children.

To support our assessment of the core subjects (English, Mathematics and Science) we use ‘NFER’ standardised assessments and ‘Rising Stars’ tests alongside teacher assessment. We capture data at 3 points across the academic year – at the end of the Autumn, Spring and Summer Term to ensure that all children are making at least expected progress.

Our Junior Leadership Team are invested in their learning and making a positive contribution to the planning and design of our curriculum.

Subject leaders encourage pupils to articulate their learning journey and understanding of the curriculum. The findings of pupil voice and discussions are regularly used to support decision making about our curriculum. This ensures that our children are actively involved in their learning, enabling them to deepen their understanding and develop retrieval strategies.