Our Curriculum

Curriculum Intent

We are delighted to now have our new curriculum in place. This was created to ensure that it is suitable for our changing cohorts and the significant changes to the world in which we live, including complex ecological, social and economic challenges. We have considered elements arising from our local area and community, as well as life skills that we felt would benefit our children in their current and future lives. Our school values, outdoor learning and their health and well-being were all areas we wanted to remain a strong focus.

We recognise our duty to prepare our pupils for the world which they will inherit and have considered what knowledge, qualities, skills and attitudes we wish our ‘Cranford Park Graduates’ to have by the time they leave us. Our aim is to ensure that each pupil who leaves us:

· Makes a Contribution

We give our pupils the attitudes they need to be good global citizens, able to make a difference to the wider community. We want them to be proud of who they are and to use their talents and strengths to make a meaningful contribution.

· Has a Positive Outlook

Through our ethos and the opportunities we provide, we teach children to have a growth mindset, resilience, confidence, independence and high self-esteem. They think creatively to solve problems and resolve conflict.

· Can see the Bigger Picture

Our pupils know how their learning impacts their future and leave us with aspirations, hopes and dreams. They are curious, creative and inspired to continue their learning. They appreciate the rich diversity and wonder of their planet and show concern for sustainability issues.

We have identified the knowledge, understanding, skills and opportunities within each National Curriculum subject we offer that will enable the children in our care to be valuable and productive members of society. We have considered where each element of the learning takes place in order to build on previous learning and to prepare our children for what is to come. In this way, children’s knowledge, understanding and skills build and deepen over time. Our subject pages offer more detail on the progression within each subject.

Curriculum Implementation

At Cranford Park CE Primary School, we believe that pupils learn best when they are inspired by imaginative and creative activities and learning opportunities. We have developed a creative, flexible and challenging curriculum for our school which not only incorporates all the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum, but also includes areas of study which we believe will inspire our pupils. In addition, it has our community and our Christian vision and values at its heart. We plan a cross-curricular approach where pupils are able to use skills from one area of the curriculum to advance their learning in another area. For example, they will use mathematical skills for data collection to find out about our local environment and then use their literacy skills to write a leaflet about the local environment using the geographical knowledge they have gained. In addition, staff will add additional valuable ‘cultural capital’ to our offer.

We have identified the elements of teaching and learning which we believe make the most difference to children’s learning and have an expectation that we will see these in all lessons. These include high expectations for all, good assessment, strategies for independence, effective feedback and modelling, inclusive strategies and a high element of discussion and thinking skills.

Curriculum Impact

Our new curriculum is still in its early days. We monitor its impact in a wide variety of ways to ensure that all our children are making good progress towards the end of year expectations for their year group. We want to know what children know, remember and can do, We therefore assess our children, both within each lesson as part of our everyday practice (through questioning, looking at their work and discussing their learning with them) and periodically through ‘summative’ tasks or assessments to see what they have learned over time.

School leaders will also review the impact of the curriculum more widely through their monitoring activities. This will include observations of the children learning, looking at their work, discussing their learning with them and looking at their outcomes from tests and other assessments. Each term, Senior Leaders will meet with teachers to discuss the progress of each child and if there are concerns, additional provision may be offered, such as an intervention, additional support, resources, or tutoring. In addition, we will try to identify pupils with a particular aptitude for a subject so that we can nurture and encourage these interests and skills in a variety of ways.