Curriculum

Curriculum Areas

Our Curriculum is organised and led in these three subject areas:

Performance, Arts and Communication 

STEM

Global 

Our Vision

We all matter at Mattersey.

A Mattersey pupil is happy, confident and successful; prepared for life. All of our pupils have access to a wide range of opportunities to support their academic and personal development; they are knowledgeable and prepared to be ready for the challenges of today and in their future. All of our pupils are engaged in a curriculum that enthuses and excites them to learn effectively, as well as providing the knowledge they need to progress successfully through each phase of our school and beyond.

Basic Principles

Our curriculum is designed to cover The National Curriculum 2014 and the Nottinghamshire agreed syllabus for Religious Education. It is also designed to be a curriculum that meets the needs of all of our pupils, developing vocabulary, language and engagement with books/reading, and also a curriculum which supports our pupils’ personal development. We know our pupils very well and, to ensure every pupil succeeds in our mixed age classes, we adapt the curriculum to meet our children's personal needs and interests as appropriate.

Our key drivers, What Matters at Mattersey, encompass the key skills and characteristics we wish to develop in our pupils in both their academic study and their personal development starting in the Foundation Stage, and then developing and strengthening them as the pupils progress through school to Year 6.  They link to our behaviour policy and permeate across the whole curriculum:

Confidence

Curiosity

Honesty

Independence

Resilience

Enthusiasm

Kindness 

Perseverance 

Teamwork 

Respect

Research

We have developed our curriculum with 'The Big Question' approach. This is a metacognition approach which supports pupils' understanding of the key learning within each lesson, and encourages children to refer back to the learning, recall and retain what they have learnt and develop their independence as learners.

Sweller et al (2011) states “that if nothing in the long term memory has been altered, nothing has been learned.” With this in mind, we have researched and are developing the work of Barak Rosenhine in our lesson planning. Rosenshine suggested classroom practices based on ten principles of instruction which understand how the brain acquires and uses new information, as well as the classroom practices which have the highest gains for pupils in terms of them retaining their learning. 

Curriculum Aims

Our curriculum aims to:

• Provide a broad and balanced education for all pupils that is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge, that enthuses and excites all pupils and enables them to learn effectively.
• Provide the knowledge pupils need to progress successfully through each phase of our school, establishing the foundations of learning so that building blocks can be cemented and strengthened as pupils progress through our school and beyond.
• Actively teach the key skills and characteristics that pupils need to be effective learners, promote a positive attitude to learning and equipping the pupils with the knowledge, skills and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.
• Support pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development working in partnership with parents and the wider community to provide a the very best opportunities for our pupils.

Cultural Capital

A person’s level of cultural capital is a significant indicator of how well they are able to succeed academically and engage in wider society. At Mattersey, we want to ensure that along with teaching the content of our curriculum, we are enabling our pupils to develop and succeed as well-informed individuals who are thoughtful and respectful members of our community and can successfully live in today’s world.  We aim to provide our pupils with rich cultural capital based on knowledge acquired at the earliest stage through books, language and a wide range of experiences.

Intent

Our intention is to deliver the National Curriculum programmes of study, starting with the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum, in a way which enthuses and excites pupils to learn effectively. Our curriculum provides the knowledge pupils need to progress successfully through each phase of school. We intend for our pupils to have access to a wide range of opportunities to support their academic and personal development and we prioritise fostering a love of reading through engagement with texts.

Implementation

Each subject in our curriculum has its own Intent, Implementation and Impact documentation with detailed progression maps to show the learning journey of pupils at our school within that subject area. Our EYFS policy* shows how our early years curriculum is delivered.

Our curriculum covers relationships and health education, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and the teaching of British values such as democracy, respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and respect for the rule of law. We deliver our PSHE curriculum with a focus on six key areas: Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience, Friendship and do so in discrete lessons as well as using other opportunities such as assemblies and small group sessions (SCARF slots).

Our curriculum is carefully planned over a two year cycle for EYFS/Key Stage 1 pupils which ensures that knowledge is repeated several times over therefore allowing learning to be retained in the long term memory.  The EYFS curriculum and Early Learning Goals are linked to all of the core and foundation subjects so that the learning of these subjects and development of knowledge begins in the EYFS.

In Key Stage 2, our curriculum is carefully planned over a four year cycle with links made explicit to prior learning.  For example, the History topic of ‘The Egyptians’ has a focus on the importance of the River Nile to Egyptian life, which then leads onto a Geography topic, ‘Modern Europe’ where pupils explore famous rivers and develop their knowledge of the parts of a river.

We offer our pupils continuous provision through school so that they develop their independence as learners. This also allows staff to work with children in small groups and on a one-to-one basis so that we can meet everyone's needs in our mixed age classes and ensure all of our pupils can reach their full potential. 

Whilst English and Maths are taught as discrete subjects, we also ensure we make cross-curricular links where appropriate. Each half term is linked by a key topic and the subjects of Science, History and Geography are key links to the topics, as well as including the Creative subjects, Technologies and Health and Well-being.

Opportunities for learning opportunities to be everywhere are utilised as much as possible, including in our assemblies and enrichment days. Such as celebrating World Book Day, British Science week, National E-Safety, Anti-Bullying week, RE themed days. All staff in school are part of the curriculum journey for our pupils.

Impact

What difference will our curriculum make to pupils?

Our pupils will be happy, confident, successful learners; prepared for life. They will be enthused and excited by their learning, resilient and curious to find out more, and provided with the knowledge they need to progress successfully through each key stage in our school and beyond.

Our pupils will develop the skills and characteristics to become effective learners through their academic study as well as through the broad range of experiences they are given to develop:  confidence, curiosity, honesty, independence, resilience, enthusiasm, kindness, perseverance, teamwork and respect.

The learning journey the pupils are on is valued, and as we know that learning is a change to long term memory, our pupils will develop their conceptual understanding over a key stage so they are prepared for each stage of their education. Our pupils can talk about their learning and, overtime, their ability to verbalise their knowledge progresses also.

As we continue to develop and review our curriculum, we will develop the way that we asses the foundation subjects which will enable us to further see the impact of our curriculum and help us to adjust and further develop our curriculum.

Please look at each subject area in this section of our website to see the curriculum details and knowledge and skills that our pupils will develop as they progress through our school.

Please contact Mrs Wilson if you require any further information about our curriculum.