Curriculum Statement, Fishponds Church of England Academy

Fishponds CE Academy Curriculum Statement

At Fishponds CE Academy, we follow the objectives taken from the National Curriculum 2014. Using our knowledge of our children and the community we serve, we have designed a creative and engaging curriculum, which will stimulate, inspire and raise standards for all children. We aim to provide opportunities for personal and academic development where children consistently make links between new learning and prior areas of study. We aim to inspire every child to ‘Love to Learn and Learn to Love’ whilst gaining the knowledge and skills needed for the next stage of their lives.

Our Curriculum Intentions

Through working with stakeholders, gathering pupil voice and identifying fundamentals of quality first teaching, we have developed key intentions for our curriculum:

To inspire and enthuse our children.
To ensure the children have access to a curriculum which is progressive and challenging for all, enabling the children to make meaningful links between different aspects of learning.
To demonstrate our CE ethos by teaching our children to love themselves and others whilst developing a love of learning. This is underpinned by 1Corinthians 13 V4-7 and our 12 values.
To enable our children to develop learning behaviours which support lifelong learning.
To ensure our children develop and understanding of their identity and purpose, better understanding their place in the world.
To develop our children as critical thinkers, empowering them to demonstrate courageous advocacy and develop their spirituality.
To enable the children to develop language skills, building a rich vocabulary.
To enable the children to develop their cultural understanding and respect.
To ensure our children develop healthy lifestyle habits that support positive mental and physical health.
To ensure children can develop and apply their English and mathematical knowledge and skills.
To encourage our children to foster a love of reading for pleasure, as well as reading to inform and explore.
To develop computing skills that support future life.
To provide our children with a broad range of new experiences which enrich their knowledge and understanding of the world around them.
To develop links with the local community and Bristol as a city.

Curriculum Implementation

At the core of Fishponds CE Academy’s curriculum is the National Curriculum. We have used this to plan topics, which inspire our children, whilst enabling them to develop key knowledge and skills in a systematic and progressive way. We have considered how our curriculum will be implemented to ensure that this happens.

Whole Curriculum Implementation

Topics contain a clear learning journey, which enables the children to build on their prior knowledge.
Connections are made between new learning and prior knowledge. Children are encouraged to look for ‘golden threads’ which connect their learning experiences.
Children are provided with the opportunity to apply their maths and English skills across the curriculum.
The use of pre-teaching enables children access new vocabulary within lessons.
The children have access to a broad range of experiences, trips and visitors.
Learning to Learn behaviours are threaded through the whole curriculum.
Collective worship enables our children to understand and apply the values of the school
Skills progressions are used to ensure children the children develop their knowledge and skills in a progressive manner.
Assessment for learning informs gap filling intervention support to ensure the children have the key building blocks needed to secure age appropriate knowledge and skills

Curriculum Impact

We develop life-long learners, prepared for the 21st century world.
We develop children’s knowledge and skills across all curriculum subjects.
The work of our wider curriculum will impact on attainment at the end of each key stage.
Our children successfully transition into the next stage of their life as learners
Our children will believe that they can make a difference in our school and wider community and continue to uphold our values in their lives.

Curriculum Design

When developing our curriculum, we have considered the following key strands:

Progression – We have designed a whole school curriculum overview which ensures the children develop their knowledge and skills in a progressive way. The design of this overview has ensured that children consistently build on prior knowledge and make links in their learning.
Breadth and depth of experiences – We ensure that our children have access to a wide variety of subjects and experiences. The children are given opportunities to study each curriculum are in depth to build solid knowledge and understanding.
Support and challenge for all – Differentiation is used across our curriculum to ensure that children of all abilities can access the learning and achieve their full potential. Children are given the opportunity to deepen their knowledge
Relevance – In curriculum areas, children are given the purpose of what they are learning to support them in understanding why they are learning what they are. Enterprise projects give children the opportunity to place their learning in real life contexts, highlighting the relevance of why they learn what they learn. We have chosen topics which link to our local context and the heritage of our children, as well as some key historical and geographical topics which provide the children with key knowledge needed for the next stage of their lives.

Golden Threads

We have sequenced our curriculum in a way which is progressive across the year the child is in and across the wider school learning journey. Links made between topics of study, curriculum areas and cross-curricular links are referred to within our curriculum as golden threads. Some examples of golden threads are listed below.