Curriculum Vision Statement

Curriculum at Brisbane Park
Our Curriculum Vision

‘Believe in Yourself’

At Brisbane Park we seek the highest standards of attainment for all our children. We aim to help our children to become independent learners. Above all we believe learning is fun.

We promote our school vision statement - ‘Believe in Yourself.’

We believe that learning is a shared commitment that involves children, parents, governors and staff to ensure our children are given the best possible learning opportunities.

The curriculum at Brisbane Park: -
At Brisbane Park we work as key stage teams to ensure an effective and exciting curriculum is planned for our children. The Head Teacher and Curriculum Leader oversee the planning to ensure appropriate coverage for each subject.

Curriculum Responsibilities
 

The 3I’s (Intent, Implementation and Impact)

Intent – we provide children with

• a broad and balanced topic based curriculum with a strong focus on experiential learning. 
• a language rich environment

Implementation –

• the highest standard of attainment for our children
• teachers ensure questions are thought about and planned for
• effective modelling of skills
• challenges and support strategies in place to suit all children, booster groups and interventions
• ongoing formative assessment to inform future planning
• moderation within school and out of school to inform future planning
• strong working partnerships created and maintained with parents and carers
• opportunities for children to work in mixed ability groups
• classroom environments to be tidy and organised, displays are clear, bright and relevant to promote learning
• all classrooms to have a child appealing reading area with a variety of books changed regularly
• investigation opportunities to reinforce and embed skills

Impact –

• happy, confident, nurtured children
• children believe in themselves
• children have a love of learning
• children make at least expected progress with the attainment gap closing
• children aspire to be confident citizens
• children will be happy and fulfilled in later life

Curriculum and Planning

Our governing body’s curriculum committee is responsible for monitoring the way the school curriculum is implemented.

The head teacher is responsible for the day-to-day organisation of the curriculum. The head teacher monitors the weekly lesson plans for all teachers, ensuring that all classes are taught the full requirements of the National Curriculum, and that all lessons have appropriate learning objectives.

The curriculum leader will monitor the whole curriculum throughout the school, and feedback to the head teacher, focussing particularly on breadth of coverage each year group is covering and if this fits in with the appropriate curriculum for each year group. Planning should be based on topic as much as possible. The curriculum leader, along with the enrichment and enhancement leader, will also monitor enrichment and enhancement activities to ensure thy support teaching and learning. Homework, timetables and challenges will also be monitored.

Each curriculum area has a subject leader who is responsible for writing and updating policies for their subject and keeping up to date with new initiatives related to their subject. The core subjects have 2 leads for each subject. They are responsible for monitoring coverage, progress and attainment in their subject area throughout the school, this includes termly analysis of Scholarpack for their subjects and knowing how children in different groups are progressing in these areas.    
 

Long Term Plans –
We have detailed progression maps for each subject which have been created to meet the needs of our school. The objectives will be taken from these plans and feed into the medium term plans where activities linked to the current topics will be considered and planned for.

Medium Term Plans –
We use the medium term plans produced by the schemes we are following, class teachers ensure these plans are edited as needed to meet the needs of their own classes. We produce our own Medium Term Plans for English.  
In EYFS a termly breakdown is created for each area of the curriculum showing coverage and activities.  

Short Term Plans - Weekly/daily plans are produced for English, Literacy and Maths lessons across the school, these should be detailed enough for a supply teacher to follow if needed and should state the desired learning outcome for each lesson (matched to curriculum), challenge for each ability group and use of additional adults within the lesson. Teachers use Bug Phonics planning for their phonics lessons and these should be printed and annotated for each lesson taught. KAPOW lesson plans should also be printed out for teachers to annotate after each lesson. A weekly overview will be produced by all class teachers showing objectives and brief lesson description for all other subjects. These overviews will be shared weekly with parents.

Children’s work is recorded in a variety of books (see appendix 1 of book recommendations for each key stage)

Any out of school activities should enhance and enrich the curriculum children are following.

EYFS

At Brisbane Park we follow the EYFS Foundation Stage Curriculum with all children working towards achieving the Early Learning Goals by the end of Reception. The EYFS is made up of seven areas of learning and development, all areas are crucial in early learning and often inter-connect.                                                            

The three prime areas are: -

• Communication and Language
• Physical Development
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development

The four specific areas are:-

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding of the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

The curriculum in EYFS is a balance of planned, purposeful play, both indoor and outdoor, adult led work and child initiated work. The children will have the opportunity each day to explore different areas of the classroom as part of their continuous provision and also work with an adult on a focus directed task. Whole class sessions are also be delivered to children. Teachers plan for a balanced, creative curriculum. All areas within the EYFS will be planned for. Child initiated activities will be noted down on weekly/daily annotations of lessons. Observations carried out by the EYFS team identify children’s next steps for learning and their progress is recorded regularly.  Children in EYFS have daily phonics and handwriting sessions. At Brisbane Park we teach White Rose Maths scheme of work which covers all areas of the Early Years Framework. Our Phonics scheme is Bug Club Phonics, this is a new scheme implemented from January 2022.
 

KS1

In Years 1 and 2 the National Curriculum 2014 is followed. The subjects taught are Mathematics, English, Science, Computing History, Geography, Design Technology, Art and Design, Physical Education and Music. In English groups, we use quality texts for our English planning.  White Rose Maths scheme is used for Mathematics, this covers all of the National Curriculum, class teachers adapt their planning to suit the needs of individual children within their class. Our handwriting scheme links in with the Bug Club Phonics programme in Reception and Year 1. In Year 2 children begin to do cursive handwriting and follow letter family order. KS1 use Bug Club Phonics throughout Year 1 and in Year 2 as needed, Year 2 focus on spelling strands, we use Spelling Shed for our planning ideas once children are secure in Phase 5 phonics. We use KAPOW planning for Science, Geography, History, Music, Computing, PSCHE, DT and Art. We adapt to suit the needs of the children in our classes.  Art and DT are rotated, one is taught one half term then the other the next half term. Geography and History are rotated, one is taught one half term then the other the next half term.
Other areas we cover are RSE/ PSCHE through the KAPOW scheme, Global Learning and British Values. We also use the scheme of work from KAPOW for RE.

The teaching approach will be varied throughout the day with opportunities for whole class teaching, group work – ability and mixed ability, independent work, 1:1 work. There will be a variety approaches too to allow for different learning styles and class teachers will adapt accordingly for individual children and classes.  Children will be taught in own classes by their own class teacher and supported by senior teaching assistants and the Inclusion Officer.  

Inclusion

We believe every child is important and deserves to be given the best possible learning opportunities. If a child is identified as having a problem with their learning we provide learning tasks matched to their needs. Children are given the chance to work 1:1 or in a small group situation. The Inclusion Officer, with support from class teachers and senior teaching assistants, writes IPPs for these children and these are monitored and updated half termly. Our Inclusion Officer is available to advise and direct staff in the best approach for children struggling with their class work. Provision maps for each class/year group will be updated termly.

The curriculum in our school is designed to be accessed by all children who attend the school. If we think it necessary to modify some children’s access to the curriculum, in order to meet their needs, then we do this only after their parents have been consulted.

Assessment

At Brisbane Park we use Scholarpack to assess and track our children’s progress in the core subjects. This is updated every half term by class teachers and monitored and analysed termly by the SLT. From September 2023 we will use KAPOW assessments for the foundation subjects.

Phonics and reading tracking is completed termly by each class teacher and analysed by the Curriculum Leader. Half termly writing assessments are carried out by each class, independent writing takes place in KS1 throughout each term and shows progress of children and the development of skills in this area. The Curriculum Leader monitors all assessments related to English. White Rose Maths assessments are carried out at the end of each block of learning and at the end of each term to inform teachers of areas needing more work. The Maths Leader, along with the Curriculum Leader, monitors progress in this subject. Phonic phase tests are carried out at the beginning and end of each Phonic Phase from 2 to 5a. Mock phonics screening tests are carried out at the end of Autumn and Spring Terms in Year 1.

Baseline assessments are carried out during the first term of Reception.

Reading age tests are carried out termly in KS1 and during the Summer Term in EYFS.

Year 1 Phonics screening takes place at the end of Year 1.

End of KS1 assessments take place in May of Year 2.

Class teachers are responsible for updating Scholarpack and KAPOW assessments for subjects across the curriculum, this should be an ongoing process and updated regularly throughout each term. At the end of each term the Head Teacher, Inclusion Officer and Curriculum Leader use the class teacher’s assessment judgements to place each child at their correct learning point for that half term, this data is then analysed by the Head Teacher and discussed with the Inclusion Officer, Curriculum Leader and class teachers. Class teachers then use these assessments to ensure coverage the following term is pitched correctly for each child in each subject.
Assessment at Brisbane Park is an ongoing process.