Our Curious Minds Curriculum

Curiosity is one of our core values at Larkrise. We live this value by encouraging children to be curious learners who think, question and seek new knowledge.

Our Curious Minds curriculum is a work in progress – take an early look at what we intend our pupils to learn, how we aim to implement the curriculum and measure the impact.

What do we intend our pupils to learn from our Curious Minds curriculum?

Our Curious Minds curriculum will offer a multidimensional learning experience, in which our pupils will foster their curiosity productively as they are challenged to think and ask questions across our core competencies.

We will encourage all our pupils to connect their new learning to their prior knowledge - horizontally across subjects, vertically across years and ultimately, diagonally across subjects and years. This way they will learn more, know more and remember more!

1. The Core Competencies of the Curious Mind:

Skills

• We want all children to learn to talk and talk to learn. Oracy will be at the heart of teaching and learning at Larkrise. It will be taught in every lesson through various means, including reading comprehension, digital technology, collaboration and metacognition.
• The skills progression in each National Curriculum subject will be mapped coherently so that children can master subject-specific skills, such as map reading in Geography and observational drawing in Art and Design.
• A focus on the skills of 21^st Century Learning: Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration and Creativity and Innovation will be essential to prepare our children for the future.

Knowledge

• The knowledge content of our Curious Minds curriculum will be relevant, pertinent and engaging to the context and interests of our pupils at Larkrise. Higher order thinking will be encouraged as we challenge children to apply the key facts they have learnt to new situations and across subjects, particularly English, Mathematics and Science.
• As there is so much knowledge, it is impossible to fit it all within our core curriculum. Our digital Curious Minds offer will signpost multi-modal texts that serve to encourage every child to explore the background that our chosen core curriculum sits within. 

English and Mathematics

We will provide significant opportunities for pupils to master English and Mathematics. We believe mastery in these subjects is vital if children are to fully access a broad and balanced curriculum.

Understanding our World - Science, Geography, History, Religious Education and Languages

We will develop our pupils' understanding of the world by building scientific, geographical and religious knowledge and skills. Pupils will have the opportunity to learn French from year three onwards.

Creating and Inventing - Art and Design, Music, Design Technology and Computing
We want our pupils to be brilliant creators and inventors. Learning in Art and Design, Music, Design Technology and Computing will provide rich opportunities for creativity and invention.

Sports, Health and Citizenship - Physical Education, PSHCE, including health and relationships and Habits of Happiness

We want all our pupils to stay healthy, build strong friendships and make a positive contribution to society. We encourage every child to participate in sports to help boost self-esteem and confidence. Happiness will be a habit at Larkrise through regular opportunities for increased awareness, movement, gratitude and kindness.

First-hand Experiences

• Exploration and discovery of first-hand experiences will give children a firm understanding of how and why things work and build their confidence to approach new challenges.
• Each school year will offer guaranteed experiences so that every child will gain valuable knowledge and understanding that can only be acquired from first-hand experiences. 

Meta-learning and character

• Children will be encouraged to understand how they learn so they can reflect, adapt, and proactively take steps to progress their knowledge and understanding. Identifying and responding to mistakes will be viewed as a positive learning opportunity.
• Our school values and the British values will underpin our curriculum and help children to develop the character traits that will enable them to make a positive contribution to our school community and the wider society.

2. Enrichment and Digital Learning

We know curious minds choose to explore learning at any time or place. We will make this possible through enrichment clubs and digital resources.

Enriching Curious Minds

We will aim to offer a wide range of extra-curricular clubs to enable all children to explore their creative, physical, environmental and social interests with others.

Curious Minds – Go Digital!

We will offer purposeful blended learning opportunities for our children with digital resources. This will be achieved by signposting a broad range of apps, online learning platforms and websites to deepen our pupils’ understanding of the core competencies and the wide knowledge background that they sit within.

3. A Bold Beginning for a Curious Mind – Early Years

Our youngest pupils will be curious and active learners, who will learn through play by thinking, questioning, reflecting and making links to the world they live in. In the Early Years at Larkrise, children will have high autonomy over their learning, whilst experiencing the structure and routines that will set them up for success in year one and beyond. Crucially, we will support and challenge every child to make strong friendships, develop an understanding of how to solve problems, make choices and be creative. We will enjoy getting to know the children and encouraging their personalities to shine.

As identified in the EYFS Framework, children study seven areas of learning in the Early Years:

Prime Areas:

Personal, Social & Emotional Development

Physical Development

Communication & Language

Specific Areas:

Literacy

Mathematics

Expressive Arts & Design

Understanding the World

4. Larkrise Outside

We will explore opportunities for children, particularly in the Early Years, to engage in purposeful learning outside. We want our pupils to experience and develop an appreciation for the natural world, while practising the 21^st century skills of critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity and innovation.

How will we implement our Curious Minds Curriculum?

Great teaching is crucial to the implementation of our Curious Minds curriculum and an important commitment within the culture of excellence we promote at Larkrise. Our classroom practice will reflect Barak Rosenshine’s ‘Principles of Instruction’:

What will the impact of our Curious Minds curriculum be, how will we know and what will we do next?

Practice and retrieval

We will use a range of practice and retrieval strategies to capture data about what our pupils have learned and plan next steps for progress and schema development.

Standardised testing and moderation

We will use standardised tests in reading and mathematics to evaluate pupils’ learning each term by comparing it against national averages. Writing Moderation with similar schools within our trust will support us to make accurate judgements about the progress of our pupils‘ writing.

Identifying next steps through coaching and pupil achievement meetings

Coaching and pupil achievement meetings will provide accountability for making accurate judgements about our pupils’ knowledge and understanding so that all children can learn with success, thrive with happiness, and achieve excellence.

Current Provision

Click on the links below to find out more about the curriculum subjects and the skills progression in each year group.

Home-School Partnership

We believe that education is a partnership between home and school and that a good relationship with parents will help us to make our school better.  The support and encouragement of parents helps us to raise standards of achievement and promote positive attitudes and behaviour.  Parents are invited to sign our Home-School Agreement, which sets out our commitment to Larkrise children and parents and what they can do to help their children while they are part of the Larkrise community.

Religious Education

RE is based on the Essex scheme of work.  RE teaching is mainly Christian but children learn about most of the world's major religions.  This helps Larkrise children to develop tolerance and respect for all people.  There is also an emphasis on developing children's spirituality.

Parents are entitled to withdraw their children from daily acts of collective worship (usually hymns and prayers in assemblies) and religious education in the classroom where this conflicts with their own values and beliefs.  Please discuss this with us if this is an issue for you.  Pupils withdrawn from RE engage in individual work outside the classroom.