Whole School Curriculum Overviews

 

 

Albany Junior Curriculum Statement

Our Intent

Our curriculum framework ensures that all children access a broad, balanced, challenging and progressive knowledge rich curriculum based around the requirements of all subjects of the National Curriculum in Key Stage 2. It has been developed in conjunction with our partner school, Albany Infant and Nursery School,  in order to give our children a ‘primary curriculum experience’ from EYFS to Y6.

The curriculum framework ensures that contextual barriers to learning are overcome, ensuring that all children are able to fulfil their potential, regardless of background or ability. The curriculum framework at Albany is specific to our context and has specific components which achieve this by ensuring that:

• All children have enriched lives through access to high quality life experiences which equip pupils with the cultural capital they need e.g. visiting the theatre; going climbing; travelling on a bus; visiting the Space Centre
• All children have a love of reading through exposure to high quality texts;
• All children are able to articulate and reason about the world around them through a highly developed vocabulary;
• All children are challenged to acquire a broad and balanced range of skills and knowledge through exposure to carefully planned and progressive subject content (see curriculum map);
• All children have opportunities to develop socially, morally, spiritually and culturally and demonstrate our fundamental values (we call them our 5rRs and they are below) through the ethos of the school, assemblies and Jigsaw PSHE sessions;

Ultimately, our curriculum is one of the primary ways in which we aim to fulfil our school vision – to make learning inspirational for all of our children.

 

 

Curriculum Implementation

Our curriculum is primarily delivered through half termly and a few termly topics which are designed to excite, interest and engage children in their learning. Most of our curriculum is taught in a thematic way but also discretely where appropriate. Key features of our curriculum implementation include:

• All topics are underpinned by high quality texts to ensure that children have a wide range of reading experiences and a sound knowledge of books and stories. For example, children in Year 5 studying the geography of America will look at Holes by Louis Sachar. They will write in role, look at key themes and draw conclusions about life for a child growing up in America in the 21^st century. Texts are also used to explore vocabulary and help to develop children’s use of language both in everyday speech and in their writing.
• Teachers have a high focus on the use of questioning. All topics are planned using the learning challenge approach where an overarching big question is used to focus the children’s topic based learning with weekly questions used to break down learning into smaller pieces. For example, children in Year 6 may ask ‘What impact did Queen Victoria have on Stapleford?’ as their overarching big question, with one of their weekly questions being ‘What was it like to go to school in Victorian Stapleford’ Teachers use questioning to ensure that pupils thinking is challenged and that learning is deepened.
• All children receive focused bursts of basic skills throughout the day. These sessions focus on spelling and grammar, maths skills and wider reading.
• Throughout key stage 2, all subject areas are underpinned by key knowledge or skills to be acquired in each year group. This ensures a progressive and suitably challenging curriculum within all areas of learning and subjects.
• We provide the children with opportunities to explore quality text and a precise and enriched vocabulary to use within the context of the lesson and to connect to wider subject areas. They can use this vocabulary confidently to reason and explain their thinking about the areas they are studying. 
• We believe in supporting pupil’s growing depth of knowledge by providing a progressive set of knowledge and skills across all subject areas. Our aim is that children become increasingly accurate in the application of these skills and become fluent and proficient in all subject areas.
• Teaching staff use a consistent approach to lesson planning, through well scaffolded steps to success, clear learning outcomes, plenty of opportunities for questioning and modelling of good practice.
• All staff use a reflective approach to lessons, enabling them to evaluate learning and effectively plan the next steps for all children.
• Challenges in lessons are set using the principles of Bloom’s Taxonomy and children are encouraged to choose their own starting points and aim for the highest level challenge that they can. This focus on challenging questioning has a progressive scale, which increases from year 3 to 6.
• All topics have an accompanying knowledge organiser. These documents set out the core knowledge to be acquired by the end of the topic and also the key vocabulary to be acquired. These are sent home and shared with parents to assist with home learning.
• Our Albany ethos is based around our 5Rs (see above). These are embedded across our curriculum and alongside assemblies, theme weeks, enrichment opportunities and our Jigsaw PSHE sessions provide the children a rich framework which informs them about key values, attitudes and behaviours vital for them in a modern society.
• Our children are provided with many opportunities to engage in purposeful and relevant experiences in and out of school.  These include Science days at the local park, working on the allotment, workshop days linked to the local secondary school and residential trips. We believe that outdoor learning is fundamental to the health and well-being of our pupils.
• We encourage parental involvement through parent workshops and home-school learning logs, this provides an opportunity to encourage the parent’s understanding of our curriculum
   
• Impact

The intended impact of our curriculum framework is that by the end of each year group, and ultimately by the end of Key Stage 2, children are equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary for the next stage of their education. We will talk to children and look at their work, look at teaching and learning in lessons and consider what performance data is telling us with regards to measuring the extent to which all children have fulfilled their potential, regardless of ability or background.

Below, you will find our History and Geography topic overview for each year group.