CURRICULAR INTENT

The Gordon Primary School Curriculum:

Provides context
Inspires curiosity
Nurtures creativity
 

Our curriculum has been designed to provide a context to learning: the curriculum is chronological and themed: History, RE, DT and Art and Design are taught chronologically where appropriate and topics within the foundation subjects are grouped so that the learning of one subject supports and enriches the learning of other subjects. For instance, the geography topic of rivers is taught in Year 3 to support the learning of Bronze Age river civilisations.

Our chronological and themed curriculum inspires curiosity and nurtures creativity because having a strongly developed context to their learning empowers children to ask questions, recognise patterns, spot relationships, compare and contrast, evaluate cause and effect and explore scenarios.

CURIOSITY

We inspire curiosity through empowering children with a context to their learning and through higher order questioning: in history we have developed an overall question for each unit of work. For instance, the children will explore the question: Which period would you like to have lived in: Palaeolithic, Mesolithic or Neolithic and why? Children are also encouraged to reflect on questions about legacies of different civilisations. In DT, children are asked whether they think gears, pulleys or levers have had the biggest impact on the lives of humans. Children are asked to consider ‘what if’ questions e.g. what if the Battle of Britain had never happened. They are also encouraged to look at relative impact e.g. which event had the greatest impact on the outcome of WW2 – Battle of Britain or the D Day landings?

CREATIVITY

We nurture creativity through encouraging children to use their imagination, problem solve and ‘look outside the box’. We feel strongly that if children are equipped with a context to their learning and if they are inspired to be curious then they will be creative. A themed curriculum encourages creativity by enabling children to be imaginative and make links. Lesson design is crucial to enabling the children to be creative.

CURRICULAR CONTENT – SCHEMES OF WORK AND LESSON DESIGN

We believe strongly that the curriculum content and lessons should be exciting and well planned. We use motivational resources such as artefacts, visual images, sound clips, props and costumes to ‘hook’ children in to their learning. We design lessons that are interactive, lively and engaging.