Curriculum
Our Curriculum Vision
At Hanging Heaton CE (VC) J&I School, we value the diverse community we serve. Children benefit from a strong home-school partnership to support their development and learning. While we work to support the pockets of disadvantaged children in our community, we also work to ensure the significant proportion of children who achieve the very highest outcomes are appropriately challenged and supported to fulfil their potential.
As a Church school with Christian values, we work to support the personal development, well-being and mental health of everyone in our community. We value every member of our community and believe that all should feel a strong sense of belonging to our school.
Children and their learning are at the heart of all that we do.
Every aspect of the curriculum at Hanging Heaton CE (VC) J&I School is valued.
Strategic intent
To develop a curriculum which:
- will promote high standards academically.
- will inspire our children to demonstrate their individual talents and interests.
- will prepare learners for their future and allow them to be valued and responsible citizens who are independent thinkers, curious and motivated to achieve.
- will serve our distinct school community to achieve our wider school aims and promote our Christian values.
Curriculum principles
Children will leave Hanging Heaton CE (VC) J&I School with the necessary knowledge and skills to achieve the best possible outcomes, fulfil their potential and move on to the next phase of education as successful, ambitious and hard-working learners. Pupils leave Hanging Heaton CE (VC) J&I School feeling secure with happy memories, as confident and able learners, and as fully-rounded, positive citizens of the world.
Our curriculum is designed to ensure they are skilled readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, historians, musicians and artists.
We believe every learning opportunity counts.
The curriculum at Hanging Heaton CE (VC) J&I School is designed so that children develop their academic, social and cultural capital.
Implementation
Content and Sequence
At Hanging Heaton CE (VC) J&I School outcomes for all our children are based on a broad and balanced progressive skills based curriculum. As children move through steps of this journey (each a logical progression from previous learning), a series of clearly-specified components are taught before being applied to composite activities. The content of the curriculum is sequenced logically and is in line with national expectations. Teaching deliberately enables children to transfer their knowledge and skills across varied areas of the curriculum.
Teaching and Learning, Assessment and Feedback
Learning is at the core of what happens in classrooms. We believe that every lesson counts and teachers are experts in using the most engaging, immersive and effective strategies to teach children.
Formative assessment is a cornerstone of our pedagogy and prior knowledge is used as a component for new learning. When children are identified not to be on track to reach our high expectations for their learning, preventative action will be taken.
Memorable experiences at Hanging Heaton CE (VC) J&I School enrich our curriculum while long-term memory is embedded through strategies such as retrieval practice, and deliberately spaced, carefully interlinked learning. We understand that learning in the short-term can be invisible and that sustained mastery takes time.
Feedback is given in line with our feedback policy. Children are given immediate feedback on their strengths and areas to improve. This happens at every opportunity in every lesson. Feedback is also given against carefully-written success criteria: these are the components needed to achieve the learning intention. Feedback may also be given at a whole-class or group level, where a common misconception has been identified.
Impact
The impact of our curriculum is that by the end of Key Stage 2, the vast majority of pupils have sustained mastery of the taught content. (They remember it, are able to do it and know it.) Children leave Hanging Heaton CE (VC) J&I School ready for their next stage in education with the knowledge and skills that they need to succeed. This is reflected in our strong data outcomes. Pupils’ love of reading is palpable and born of the culture of reading that is growing throughout school. Children understand that expectations are consistently high in every subject, so pupils’ work across the curriculum is of high quality and children take pride in all areas of their learning.
