Curriculum Statement of Intent
Curriculum Intent
At Bushbury Lane Academy, our curriculum develops the skills and knowledge needed for children to become successful learners, help prepare them for life in modern Britain and empower them to achieve success in the future. The main driving force behind how we design and deliver our curriculum, is our aim to challenge, excite and inspire our children to become successful and confident learners and achieve their best – equipping them with aspirations for their futures and the confidence to achieve them.
Our curriculum is progressive, consistent and challenging, and all pupils are taught the full content of the National Curriculum for each year group. With our mastery approach, we aim to enable all children to recall and apply what they have learnt at other points in the future rather than just at the time they first meet an idea or technique. Pupils are given opportunities to rehearse and embed these skills regularly. They are challenged not only to develop their own understanding but to master and articulate it. As a result, our pupils will be successful, self-motivated and independent. To facilitate this, we have designed a bespoke curriculum that aims to create learners who will succeed in the 21st century - creating a safe, supportive and caring environment and developing positive attitudes to learning and self-development. Care and guidance sits at the heart of the school as this allows all children, including the most vulnerable, to access their learning and curriculum entitlement. To raise aspirations, we engender a sense of personal pride in achievement and provide a purpose and relevance for learning.
To meet the needs of our community, we provide many opportunities and experiences for our children that enables them to make connections with local and world current affairs. Our vision is to engage with parents and carers to create a learning community, built upon British values – encouraging greater appreciation of each other’s personal differences, developing a sense of self and celebrating diversity. We aim to involve the whole school community in celebrating achievement and potential, and we organise regular opportunities for parents and carers to come into school and celebrate children’s learning.
Curriculum Implementation
Our curriculum is in line with the National Curriculum, which is covered in full; each half term, every child is immersed in an engaging adventure which covers a range of subjects including Science, History, Geography, Art and Design Technology. It comprises all learning experiences-including enrichment activities, lunchtime and after school clubs and 11 before 11 promises, which are planned to meet the needs and interests of our pupils, providing education with character that helps them to find the best in themselves – we want our children to leave Bushbury Lane Academy as independent, confident and successful learners with high aspirations. Some subjects are taught outside of this (Such as Music, French, PSHE, PE and RE), and teachers make cross curricular links with these when possible (please see individual subject documents for more information). In addition to this, our ‘Beyond Bushbury’ days are delivered by a variety of practitioners and organisations, and encourage children to embrace life beyond school in curriculum areas such as Music, Computing, MFL, RE, PSHE and PE.
Every teacher plans engaging learning opportunities to meet the needs of their class. The delivery of the learning is based on a clear and consistent structure which focuses on recall and retrieval for retention, and application of knowledge and skills, as well as a focus on the teaching, and acquisition, of new vocabulary. The design of the structure of each lesson is aligned with the children’s needs – their starting points and the cognitive learning demands of what is being taught is considered at the planning and delivery stage of each lesson. We use knowledge organisers (a set of key facts or information that pupils need to know and be able to recall in order to master a unit or topic) and make them available to the children during each adventure. This way, we help our pupils remember what they are learning and see the bigger learning journey in their subjects. Instead of forgetting previous learning, pupils continually revisit and retrieve prior learning from their memories; teachers enable them to do this by using connectivity planning documents and using questioning that reignites prior learning during lessons.
At Bushbury Lane Academy, we are mindful of teacher workload and use supporting schemes of work for curriculum planning:
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Cornerstones Curriculum Maestro to plan and deliver foundation subjects
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TACT (The Arts Centre Telford) for music
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Jigsaw for PSHE
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Engaging Science
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Love to Celebrate (Cornerstones) for RE
Curriculum Impact
Through our curriculum, all children will be able to know and remember more – they leave Bushbury Lane as empowered individuals, keen to explore the next stage of learning. The majority of the children will be able to reach age related expectations and some will reach greater depth; the curriculum prepares the children for the next stage in learning at all key stages.
The impact of our curriculum is measured by monitoring the following areas:
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Attendance data (including school and trips and residentials).
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Attainment data.
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Progress measures KS1 - KS2.
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Pira and Puma standardised tests (Reading and Maths)
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Progress and attainment outcomes for all pupil groups.
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Foundation subject assessments (through ‘Show us what you know’ sessions).
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Engagement in enrichment activities.
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Book looks to inform leaders with regards to progression within units and year groups, sequencing, content, subject specific lessons.
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Pupil Voice.
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Behaviour analysis.
