Our Voyage of Discovery
As the children undertake their Voyage of Discovery through Christ Church, their passion for learning will be ignited as they develop an inquisitive growth mindset. They will travel with our Christian values of Peace and Hope, building Friendships based on Love and Trust whilst learning the power of Forgiveness and ultimately leave us prepared for a future of unlimited possibilities.
Intent
Here at Christ Church Junior School, we have devised a curriculum that gives the children a rich and meaningful learning experience that is broad, balanced and ambitious for all. In its widest sense the learning experience is more than formal lessons, but includes events, activities, themed days, visitors, excursions, residential trips, extracurricular clubs, participation in festivals and competitions and so much more.
Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural development is embedded throughout the curriculum, ensuring the children can become reflective, understanding, respectful and tolerant of their own and others’ needs and choices in life. British Values of Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect, Democracy and Rule of Law permeate the curriculum which has been designed to include a broad diversity of culture and character.
Our curriculum has been carefully mapped to ensure clear progression across the school so that knowledge, understanding, skills and concepts are built on over time. The children can then develop as life-long learners, with the enthusiasm for learning and the skills to achieve.
This green and pleasant land, Year 3
Veni, Vidi, Vici, Year 4
Explorers, Year 5
To infinity and beyond, Year 6
Implementation
We have adopted a thematic approach to our curriculum and carefully designed the learning to ‘flow’ from one topic to another within each year. Every year group has a theme that covers the children’s learning for that year and the skills and knowledge are collected and built on throughout the key stage. Our curriculum is creative and develops the children’s knowledge in breadth and depth. Whilst keeping broadly to the 2014 national curriculum, we provide greater opportunity for the children to be immersed in different topics.
English writing is linked to the topics and, where appropriate, to the other curriculum areas. For example, in year 4, one history unit is Ancient Egypt, and we are using the River Nile to link to a geography unit on Rivers while in English the children study the Cataract of Lodore by Robert Southey. This in turn, provides a segue from the cataracts of the Nile to the aqueducts of Ancient Rome. In year 5, the topic of Space links perfectly with the science unit of Earth, Sun and Moon. Where subjects do not link to the curriculum, they are taught discretely. For example, maths follows the White Rose curriculum, supporting mastery strategies and is often the first lesson of the day.
The curriculum supports the children’s reading and exposure to quality texts, as we recognise that it is fluency in reading that enables children to have access to the full curriculum in their education. We use Accelerated Reader to track the children’s progress and participate in themed days related to authors, book characters and reading. We choose quality texts to link to the theme for the year group and drive the writing where possible, such as Beowulf for the Anglo Saxons. Reading is given priority time in the curriculum daily for all children.
We aim to ensure that diversity is carefully integrated into the children’s understanding of their world through books written by authors from a broad diversity of culture, including historical characters of different ethnicities. For example, in the year 5 topic of Polar explorers, the children learn about Matthew Henson, who was with Robert Peary on his expedition to the North Pole. They learn how Robert Peary, a white European, was lauded for his achievement, while Matthew Henson, an African American, was ignored at the time.
Good behaviour for leaning is key to all children having access to the curriculum and equipping them to be successful in life. We have introduced the Zones of Regulation to support the children in managing their emotions and becoming autonomous in their behaviour control. Central to our curriculum is the concept of a growth mindset and we have built on this over the past few years, introducing the Learning Pit and giving weekly GRIT awards to children who have demonstrated key growth mindset skills. We have introduced the concept of meta-cognition and this includes the children being encouraged to embrace their errors by learning to identify them, sharing them with their peers and recognising them as a step of the learning experience.
The ability to retain and build on knowledge and skills and to make connections is at the core of our curriculum design. For example, the flow of the learning in each year group enables the children to make links between different subjects and periods of history. Each section of learning is then recorded in a mind-map book which begins in year 3 and stays with the child throughout KS2. At the end of the Key Stage, the final focus in year 6 is to look at Pollution and the Solution. They can use their knowledge and skills from year 3 onwards to reason why the planet is in crisis and what lessons we can learn from the past to help their future.
We have very high expectations for the quality of teaching across the school at Christ Church and through our monitoring processes we share good practise. Teachers are supportive of one another, with subject leaders providing support to others for their areas of curriculum responsibility.
Impact
“There are no foolish questions, and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.“
– Charles Proteus Steinmetz
Our children are polite, respectful and tolerant.
Our children develop a thirst for knowledge and are keen to question the world around them. They understand that hard work and a growth mindset will enable them to achieve well.
Our children make good progress across KS2 from their baseline assessments in year 3.
The creation and use of mind maps reinforces learning and secures knowledge. Our children can make connections within their learning, linking prior knowledge to new situations.