Learning is a change to long-term memory
At Barlow Hall, our curriculum is designed in line with cognitive science.
Our curriculum is designed in line with the simple model of memory so that children build knowledge, linking this to prior learning. The more children know, the more they can connect and think about.
Our curriculum design is based on our particular context and the needs of our children. Our teaching promotes learning and opportunities and experiences for success in life.
Our curriculum builds to clearly defined bodies of knowledge and end points.
Our curriculum is based on the best care, guidance and support for children involving their families.
Our curriculum is enriched for enjoyment, promotes healthy lifestyles, promotes a positive contribution and economic well-being, promotes staying safe and provides a social, moral and cultural contribution.
Please refer to the whole school curriculum year group overviews which can be found under each of the classes: Please click here
Aims of our Curriculum
We will build mental models and bodies of knowledge in our children’s long term memories.
Academic Excellence, ensuring that any child, no matter what their background or individual needs are, is as successful as they can be.
Empowering learning skills, we develop personal and social behaviours to support children through their primary years and to support effective life-long skills so they are self managers, resourceful thinkers, independent enquirers, team workers, reflective learners and effective participators.
Respect, this aligns with our Rights Respecting curriculum and underpins everything we do.
Physical well-being, a curriculum and mindset to support children’s health, well-being and sets lifetime habits.
Global citizenship, teaching our children about the world and their important place within it. Developing children’s awareness of their role and the positive impact they can have.
Mental Well-being and mindset, developing happy, secure and confident children who work with resilience and determination.
Creativity and the arts, to encourage creativity and personal expression and expose children to a variety of culturally diverse art forms to increase self-awareness, enjoyment, imagination and understanding.
Our Curriculum Breadth:
We follow England’s national curriculum
Core Subjects
English, Mathematics and Science
Foundation Subjects
Art and Design, Computing, Design and Technology, French, Geography, History, Music, PE.
Link to the national curriculum:
We also have a PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic) curriculum which covers age appropriate RSE (relationship and sex education) and an RE (Religious Education) curriculum which follows the agreed Manchester syllabus.
Curriculum Design at Barlow Hall
We use research in cognitive science to make learning stick, to make what is taught more meaningful and long lasting for our pupils.
At Barlow Hall, children have inquisitive minds. Our job as educators is to act on this engagement, offering rich and meaningful opportunities to broaden our pupils’ minds, extend their knowledge of the world and their place within it and support their interest in a life-long quest for learning.
Our curriculum has a strong focus on language with planned opportunities for talk across our whole curriculum, children have strong foundations for oracy. Our curriculum across the school is rich in vocabulary and exposure to new language is encouraged by ensuring we use high quality texts to support delivery. Reading is a strength in our school and we believe in promoting a love of books within our curriculum offer as we can build our children’s cultural capital.
Our curriculum is coherently sequenced in each year group and in each subject so that children can recall detailed content and make links between subjects. Our curriculum is designed to flow from lesson to lesson as a journey. Content is taught so that what has come before is used and revisited with children to help them develop further schemata and strengthen links in their knowledge and skill base. The idea behind this teaching principle is that pupils are being supported to develop from novices to experts.
Concepts are the way in which we give meaning to our curriculum breadth. We will use concepts to build a strong understanding. They are the building blocks of our learning.
We have subject specific concepts and Thinking concepts, which enable us to connect our knowledge together.
Our Thinking Concepts are:
Assessment
At Barlow Hall, the purpose of assessment is to give reliable information on what children know and don’t know, what they can and cannot do, so that teachers can plan next steps.
Baseline assessments help teachers to identify starting points of learners, checking gaps and misconceptions. This helps teachers to plan future learning
Most of the assessment at Barlow Hall is formative assessment. This is where staff constantly check during the lesson, children’s understanding, that children are connecting with their secure knowledge, what is already in their long term memory, through retrieval activities. Formative assessments are more reliable. New knowledge is explicitly taught so that new knowledge connects with prior knowledge to build strong mental models that are fluent and effortless.
Summative assessments across the year our assessments sample the knowledge acquisition at the end of a unit, at the end of a term or at the end of the year; these assessments enable teachers to know where children are at any point in time.
Our curriculum design identifies what, when and how knowledge is assessed. Teachers are responding, during learning, to any gaps and misconceptions, addressing these immediately.
Documents
Whole School Curriculum Overviews
