Intent

At Shipbourne School, we nurture life-long learners who move on to secondary education with secure knowledge, skills and understanding, having engaged in a curriculum that is broad, balanced and relevant to their needs, interests and future ambitions.

We believe in providing a rich and engaging curriculum that will nurture a love of learning for every individual in preparation for their future. We understand that people learn effectively in different ways, thus we aim to provide a rich and varied learning environment with a curriculum that enables children and adults to progress and develop key skills whilst building and enhancing core knowledge, thus reaching their full potential.

Our children belong to families who are supportive and have high aspirations. Parents are fully involved and are eager to contribute and learn alongside us. Our mixed-age classes further enhance this sense of community and enable children of different ages to learn together in a safe, supportive and collaborative learning environment.

We want our children to be leaders of their own learning: pupils who can communicate confidently and effectively, who ask important questions, know how to find answers, reason competently and have the stamina to reach the end goal without giving up. We ensure that our staff enable this by constructing focused and carefully resourced learning sequences, leading to lessons that stimulate and support, as well as providing a safe space to learn and develop; a place where it is necessary to persevere and have the courage to make mistakes, so that real learning is guaranteed.

Together we will:

• Develop confidence and promote a love for learning;
• Support learning to help children achieve their best;
• Support each other to achieve our best for the whole school community;
• Enable children to be resourceful, enquiring and independent thinkers;
• Foster children’s self-esteem and help them to build positive relationships with other people, so that they can work alone or as part of a team;
• Prepare children for life in modern Britain and beyond;
• Promote British and school values;
• Promote positive relationships and develop children’s self-respect and encourage empathy and respect for the ideas, attitudes, values and feelings of others;
• Show respect for other cultures and, in so doing, promote positive attitudes towards other people;
• Provide opportunities for our children to develop a sense of community, both within school and through contributing to the local area and the people in it;
• Help children grow into reliable, independent and positive citizens;
• Help children to acknowledge their successes and share these skills with others;
• Help children to acknowledge their own feelings and those of others, developing the necessary skills to self-regulate effectively.

Implementation

Starting with the National Curriculum, we have carefully designed a whole school learning journey (across a two/three year rolling programme) which ensures that every child moving through our school is able to develop a sense of curiosity about the world around them whilst acquiring broad and balanced knowledge, skills and understanding across all subjects. Each step of the journey is designed to build on previous learning, with links clearly communicated to the children so that they are supported to remember and use what they already know to take their next steps.

Using the whole school curriculum journey, coverage documents are in place for all subjects. These detail key learning and when it will occur across the two/three year rolling programme. These documents also include key progression and vocabulary where appropriate (NB. For Curriculum Maestro subjects this is available online).

We utilise a number of high-quality learning and planning platforms to implement our rich curriculum. Central to these resources is Cornerstones: Curriculum Maestro, which underpins teaching and learning in Science, History, Geography, Art and Design and Design Technology. The rationale for the Cornerstones Curriculum takes the form of ten Big Ideas that provide a purpose for the aspects, skills, knowledge and contexts chosen to form the substance of the curriculum. These big ideas form a series of multidimensional interconnected threads across the curriculum, allowing children to encounter and revisit their learning through a variety of subject lenses. Over time, these encounters help children to build conceptual frameworks that enable a better understanding of increasingly sophisticated information and ideas.