Curriculum

Intent

Our bespoke, ambitious curriculum is designed to provide high quality education for every child, it inspires and excites our children by learning through first hand experiences relevant to the 21st century. 

We deliver a curriculum delivers skills and knowledge in a progressive way to ensure that children achieve academic and personal success. Our curriculum enables pupils to think critically about world issues and to develop an awareness of the impact our own actions can have on others. It encourages an enquiring mind and instils in them a love of learning which will last a lifetime. Pupils are taught by teachers and Learning Support Assistants with high expectations, who plan and deliver a curriculum that is stimulating, pertinent, extends pupils’ understanding of all subject areas and ensures high quality learning and outcomes.

Our curriculum exceeds the requirements of The National Curriculum and is tailored to the contextual needs of our children. Every child experiences a broad and balanced curriculum that promotes their educational, spiritual, moral, cultural and physical development. Pupils are stimulated and challenged so that they can make good progress and achieve age related expectations.  Pupils will leave Marnel Junior School prepared for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences in the next stage of their education demonstrating deep knowledge, skills and understanding of the world around them.

We intend our children to develop into aspirational, successful young people who are confident, well-rounded and able to make considered and informed choices. They will have a clear overview of career choices and a belief that anything is possible with hard work and diligence.

With an ever-changing world, we recognise the importance of working with the local community, as well as exploring wider national and global issues, to prepare children to be successful, responsible citizens of the future. We encourage independence and choice within learning and place emphasis on keeping up with technological advancements, such as the use of AI to ensure that our pupils are prepared for the modern world. Within this, we feel passionate about ensuring that our pupils are financially aware and given the skills and values needed to manage money.

Marnel provides a highly inclusive environment. Pupils at all levels are helped to achieve their learning goals. All of our children are challenged and encouraged to develop their skills and knowledge through rich and varied curriculum opportunities. Those who need more support with their learning are given targeted support to embed skills, to develop at their own pace and to learn in a style that best suits their individual needs.

Every child is recognised as a unique individual. We celebrate and welcome differences within our school community.  We prize ourselves on ensuring that our curriculum promotes Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at all levels with the strong theme of tolerance and respect running through it.

Implementation

Our bespoke curriculum is planned and delivered across our school to enable clear progression in skills and knowledge. The curriculum design  ensures that the needs of whole cohorts, individuals and small groups of children can be met within the environment of high quality teaching, supported by targeted, proven interventions where appropriate.

We value active learning opportunities to immerse children fully in to the learning experience and strive to provide creative opportunities where children are encouraged to take risks, ask questions and explore their learning in collaboration with others.

Rosenshines 10 Principles of Instruction are at the heart of our teaching and learning and both children and staff regularly review their work, within and outside of the lesson, providing appropriate questioning, support and challenge. We ensure that learners understand the small steps they need to go through and use flexible and responsive teaching to move children on when they are ready. We provide them with opportunities to apply and develop their learning following clear modelling and demonstration of skills, building on their prior learning. Independent practice is a key element of our teaching process and we use this to ensure that children have the opportunity to refine and practise skills to show understanding. Daily, weekly and monthly review are used to support children with their working memory and enable them to continually practise skills and knowledge to support the learning process.

Each subject area has a skills progression document which enables teachers to pitch the learning at the right level and sequenced building on prior understanding. This learning journey is supported through scaffolding and extend where needed to ensure appropriate pitch for all learners.

Our learning each term is coupled with our aspirational learning behaviours to support the children with their learning and overall development. These learning behaviours are:

• Open minded
• Resilience
• Respect
• Co-operation
• Reflectiveness
• Tolerance

These underpin the core values of the school and are integral to ensuring that the experiences children have are purposeful, relevant and help them to grown personally as individuals with high aspirations.

Each subject area is taught discretely and valued with its own integrity to ensure that children have a full understanding of the skills and knowledge needed to make progress across a broad and balanced range of subjects. Our PSHE lessons are incredibly important to us here and we place great emphasis on them being taught well to continue to promote our school ethos and learning behaviours. 

Where relevant, reading and writing skills are developed alongside the key objectives across the wider curriculum to provide learning opportunities which are purposeful and engaging for all children, covering a range of genres. The development and application of high quality language and vocabulary is embedded across the curriculum and whilst the teaching of reading is taught explicitly to all children daily using high quality texts, the school promotes a love of reading with a daily class story and other reading initiatives and support programmes to ensure that children leave school as competent, confident and passionate readers.

The skills of, and a love for reading is prioritised at Marnel, through:

• time set aside for independent reading.
• carefully planned reading activities in lesson times.
• selection of high quality texts, including classic and modern texts and poetry.
• targeted intervention and support for identified pupils.
• providing a wealth of opportunities to apply reading across the curriculum.
• support for pupils joining Key Stage Two with gaps in their phonics knowledge.
• ongoing assessment to ensure gaps are addressed quickly and effectively.
• a commitment to restocking the library and class reading material.
• working closely with the School Library Service to widen the range of texts used in lessons and to bring in new titles for pupils’ independent reading.
• staff and pupils sharing a love of reading  with others.

Maths is taught with a focus on mastery teaching, encompassing three main dimensions for depth: conceptual understanding, mathematical thinking and mathematical language, with reasoning and problem solving at the heart of our curriculum.

The school’s curriculum is shared with parents through year group meetings, newsletters and termly year group letters that are available on the school’s website.  Parents are given further opportunities to share in their children’s learning and our curriculum through open days, assemblies, end of unit performance’s, and exhibitions of work outcomes.

Our Platiumn OPAL play accreditation emphasises the fact that we recognise playtime as another curriculum area where children are free to create, develop socially and morally, have choice, have challenge and generally have a wonderful time allowing them to come back into the classroom fully stimulated and happy - and ready to learn. 

Impact

Through our curriculum we aim to encourage independence and an enquiring mind with a thirst for learning. Our children enjoy the broad and balanced range of subject areas covered and enjoy seeing their progress and development. 

Our children develop behaviours and habits to become effective learners. The impact is seen through their development of resilience so that our children do not give up until they are proud of what they have achieved. Pupils understand that making mistakes are part of the learning process and they are highly motivated to succeed and achieve.

Pupils will make decisions for the right reasons and in the best interests of their wider community. They will show tolerance, embrace differences, be able to decide what is right and what is wrong, and will be resilient to the influence of others. 

At all levels of leadership across the school, leaders monitor and review the curriculum to gauge the impact of our curriculum design as well as to develop and refine this further.

Our aim is for children to leave Marnel Junior School equipped to face challenges and with the skills and desire to achieve their full potential whatever path they choose.