Curriculum Intent

Horizon Primary Academy Curriculum Intent

Purpose and Aims of the Curriculum

To raise aspirations and know that no dream is too big

To enlighten children on the opportunities within the world of work

To expand children’s knowledge of the world

To build children’s understanding of the local community

To build good local and global citizens

To build positive values for education and life   

To build a love of learning and the acquisition of knowledge

 

Key Principles of the Curriculum

Learning is enquiry-based, allowing children to ask and answer questions and develop inquisitive minds. Children answer learning questions in lessons and big questions over time.

Discussion is at the heart of the learning and is a feature of the majority of lessons. Paired, group and class discussions help to build and clarify ideas and thoughts.

Collaborative learning is central to the curriculum. Children learn from each other and learning together helps children to build understanding and make connections in their learning. Children regularly learn in pairs or groups throughout the curriculum.

Language acquisition is fundamental to learning – without words, children do not have a framework in which to learn. To develop conceptual understanding children must build a rich vocabulary within and across subjects.

Learning is connected, both within and across subjects and with links to real life and the world of work. This makes learning meaningful and purposeful to the children, builds conceptual understanding and supports them to want to learn more.

 

Key Concepts

For each subject in the curriculum, key concepts have been identified. These are the big ideas within each curriculum and are defined by the following criteria:

• A concept that is fundamental to the subject
• A concept that an expert in a subject would have a good grasp of
• A concept that builds and develops over time
• A concept that is a thread across topics and contexts

These key concepts help to structure the content of learning for each subject. They provide a lens through which to study within each unit of work.

Key concepts are revisited throughout the years at the school and these concepts grow in complexity over time, always providing opportunities for children to build on previous conceptual understanding from prior year groups or units of work in previous terms. This allows children to build a ‘web of learning’ or schema within these concepts, leading to them knowing and remembering more.

 

Disciplinary Knowledge

Disciplinary knowledge is identified within in each subject curriculum. This is the knowledge of the methods that establish the substantive facts. These are mapped against each unit of learning within each subject.

 

Core Knowledge

Within each unit of learning in every subject, core knowledge is identified as truth statements. This is knowledge that is deemed to be the most significant and relates particularly to the key concepts that have been a focus within the unit.

Core knowledge helps support the continual growth of conceptual understanding over time.

Retrieval practice is used to recall and revise core knowledge in order to secure learning into the web or schema, moving learning from the working memory and into the long term memory.