The Curriculum at Avening Primary School
At Avening Primary School, children, staff and governors aim to treat everyone with respect. Resourceful, resilient and reflective, we will engage in our learning and aspire to be the very best that we can be. As a community of sucessful learners, we will collaborate to make our world a better place to live and learn. We look forward to our futures with hope.
Together we'll fly.
Our Curriculum Intent
At Avening Primary School, our curriculum and the way in which it is facilitated is determined by our five golden values: Respect, Engage, Aspire, Collaborate, Hope. Within this framework, character, resilience, healthy relationships, physical and mental well-being, and British values such as tolerance, are important characteristics which we want to develop in our young people. Our aim is to provide an exciting, challenging, relevant, outward-looking curriculum which inspires learners – intellectually, socially, emotionally, physically, spiritually, morally and culturally – so that ‘Together we’ll fly.’
Our Golden Values
1. Through our curriculum, we aim for children to be respectful: able to celebrate our difference, but treat one another equally.
2. We aim for our school to be a community of engaged achievers: self-motivated, resourceful, independent and equipped with life-long skills and knowledge.
3. Our curriculum is designed so that our children can aspire: we strive to be ambitious, reflective and achieve excellence.
4. We recognise the importance of collaboration. Our curriculum gives opportunities to learn and develop with others in our school, and learn about our local national and international communities.
5. Finally, we approach the curriculum with hope. We aim to ensure that children leave Avening Primary School with the skills, knowledge and cultural capital required for them to feel empowered and able to make a positive difference to all of our futures.
Our curriculum is carefully and consistently planned across the school to ensure a sequentially planned progression of knowledge, skills, vocabulary and cultural capital from reception to Year 6, set out in the schemes of work for each subject. This is continuously reviewed, refined and adapted by teachers and subject leads to ensure that the curriculum meets the diverse needs of all of our children within the local, national and international context of our school.
Our curriculum intent is to develop a deep body of essential knowledge, introducing our young people to the best that has been thought and said and helping them to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement: a curriculum where children have the opportunity to master key concepts that they need to be educated citizens of the future.
In addition, we recognise that our curriculum offer extends beyond the curriculum. Also central to our provision is a wide range of extra-curricular activities – sporting, artistic, musical and cerebral – as well as leadership opportunities, supporting the development of our children into rounded, confident and tolerant individuals who have a positive contribution to make to our society.
Curriculum Implementation - Choreographing a Creative Curriculum Pathway
At Avening Primary School, we see the National Curriculum as a framework on which to build a curriculum that is meaningful and motivating, which supports individual progress and which allows for opportunities to celebrate success. Ofsted (January 2019) state that ‘Learning is at least part defined as a change in long-term memory’. As Sweller et al (2011) have pointed out, ‘if nothing in the long-term memory has been altered, nothing has been learned.’ It is, therefore, important that we use approaches that help pupils to integrate new knowledge into the long-term memory and make enduring connections that foster understanding. Taking this into account, we block learning across the curriculum and repeat practice of key skills and knowledge over time as research indicates that this leads to better long-term retention of knowledge. This repetition is carefully planned through subject specific schemes of work. Our aim each term is to ‘choreograph’ a creative, cohesive and thematic pathway through a thematic learning journey, where fluid links between explicitly taught subjects encourage children to make connections in their learning, so that the knowledge and understanding of every child is built upon and extended. All learning is carefully planned through whole school schemes of work so that progressive knowledge is a key component. Our approach to planning across the curriculum revolves around a five-stage cycle:
ENGAGE |
DEVELOPAcquire KnowledgeRefine |
INNOVATEApplyPractiseProve it! |
EXPRESSDeepenExtendChallenge |
CELEBRATE |