Our Creative Curriculum

We believe that the curriculum should engage children so they not only see a value and use for learning but come to appreciate that the concept of lifelong learning is a key component in a rich and fulfilling life.

At Sampford Arundel we undertake a 'Learning Journey' approach to the curriculum where a number of subjects are linked together under one topic to create the greatest levels of excitement and enrichment.

Our vision drives our thinking for which learning experiences and curriculum activities will allow every member of our school community to flourish.

Intent

The breadth of our curriculum is designed with four goals in mind:

To give pupils appropriate experiences to develop as confident, responsible citizens (provide a rich ‘cultural capital’)
To provide a coherent, structured, academic curriculum that leads to sustained mastery for all and a greater depth of understanding for those who are capable.
To complete much of our learning outside of the classroom, as we believe that this provides children with real life, concrete examples of learning.
Highlights the importance of living to the values described by Jesus and reinforces the benefits of community.

Implementation

Our curriculum design is based on evidence from cognitive science; two main principles underpin it:

Learning is most effective with spaced repetition.
Retrieval of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength.

In addition to the two principles we also understand that learning is invisible in the short-term and that sustained mastery takes time.

Some of our content is subject specific, but we link concepts whenever possible in a cross-curricular approach.

Impact

The impact of our curriculum is measured at end of Reception Class and then after each 2 year period (Year 2, Year 4 and Year 6). This reflects the classing structure we have in school.

We measure the impact of our curriculum using conferencing and analyse tasks. This support the pupils and the teachers by monitoring and measuring pupils fluency in breadth of understanding (National Curriculum) and depth of understanding (from Kapow).

We track carefully to ensure pupils are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.