The Hitherfield Curriculum

 

Intent: 

The Hitherfield curriculum has been developed over many years and builds on the requirements within the National Curriculum for all children. It is responsive to the particular needs of the school’s community and celebrates and reflects the fact that Hitherfield is a diverse and inclusive London school.

Our curriculum reflects and commits to support vulnerable members of our school community by providing those with disadvantaged backgrounds and/or special educational needs, the opportunity to have their childhood experiences enriched and to develop learning skills and behaviours that will ensure that their initial disadvantage is overcome. It is inclusive and provides an equitable context for all learners no matter what their background. It has a particular focus on oracy and reading but additionally, provides our pupils with a wide range of challenging learning experiences to develop their cultural capital in order to be ambitious, successful citizens.

The curriculum is carefully sequenced and planned from the Early Years to Year 6 to enable all of our pupils to build their subject knowledge and develop their academic skills and learning dispositions in order to achieve. Each learning area is overseen by our subject leaders who work collaboratively to update it when necessary. The curriculum provides the context through which pupils develop key Learning Dispositions leading to a belief in their ability to learn, a confident sense of self, the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle and the ability to form positive relationships with others. This ensures that pupils leave Hitherfield ready for the next stage in their education.

Implementation:

Teachers at Hitherfield are well supported by leaders to teach the range of subjects required by the National Curriculum; their skills lie in being able to provide opportunities for children to develop subject specific language, knowledge and concepts that can be learned within each subject. They understand how to use these contexts to ensure that children develop their understanding from being able to process single ideas to being able to see relationships that exist within an area of learning and from there to creatively extend their learning into new areas.

The curriculum has been developed to ensure that a pupil’s understanding of a subject and their ability to speak about it develops throughout the time that they attend Hitherfield. Subject leaders make sure that they know how pupils across the school are developing knowledge and skills in the area they lead and are responsible for keeping the curriculum relevant for our pupils.

Teachers use their subject knowledge and understanding of child development to assess pupils whilst they are learning and provide timely and effective feedback against specific criteria. This means that, throughout the learning process, Hitherfield learners know where they are going, how they are doing and what they need to do next in order to reach their objective. The classroom environment teachers build with their pupils reflect all aspects of the learning taking place and this is also showcased through class assemblies.

All staff understand their role in using the curricular context to support the development of good learning dispositions which underpin the academic, emotional, physical and social learning of all pupils.

Through the school's approach to Home-Learning, pupils are provisded with the opportunties for repeated practice of key skills, such as spelling, as well as reasearch based learning, linked to the topics studied.

 

Impact:

At Hitherfield Primary School, we use a wide range of monitoring strategies throughout the year to measure the impact of the curriculum content, design, and approach. Leadership at all levels monitor individual subjects: reviewing learning, evaluating pupil voice, providing individual feedback to move practice forward, celebrating positives and highlighting areas of development. Teachers use assessment for learning strategies to evaluate, adjust, and maximise the impact of the curriculum on pupil outcomes. Our whole school team strengthens our ethos and vision as we work together to reflect upon our curriculum and share outcomes driving forward next steps. In doing so, we take into account the outcomes of various monitoring activities together with available summative assessment information.

As a diverse and multi-cultural school community, we believe our children possess unique talents, skills and qualities. They have the right to succeed and the right to develop who they are in a respectful and nurturing environment. Our school ethos is firmly rooted in our values and learning dispositions with a love of learning being the foundation of everything we do, so that we really are a community of learners, proudly achieving ‘Excellence for All’ as one Hitherfield Family.