Our Curriculum Intent Statement
At Temple Grove Academy, our curriculum is broad, contextualised and encourages a deep understanding of all that is taught. It is purposeful, engaging, discussion-rich and caters to the needs of all of the pupils in our care, thus enabling them to thrive academically and develop key social, emotional, moral, cultural and spiritual values.
At Temple Grove, we believe that our curriculum should enrich the lives of our children, providing them with a thirst for knowledge and valuing each and every subject with equal importance. Understanding that each individual has specific interests and talents, we provide a balanced curriculum to ensure that every child is provided the opportunity to excel. In our ever advancing world, we strive to provide our pupils with the knowledge and skills necessary to prepare them for every stage of their future.
Our curriculum at Temple Grove is ever-developing to ensure children:
- Achieve the very best possible outcomes;
- Are proactive in developing the key skills pertinent to being successful in the future, ensuring that they become active contributors to society;
- Are taught in a way that is meaningful and can be applied to real-life contexts;
- Are happy, resilient and eager, always adopting a positive attitude towards learning.
Our Curriculum Intent
When creating our curriculum at Temple Grove, we considered the following key factors:
- Its ability to be readily adapted to be responsive to emerging circumstances so long as the key principles remain at its core;
- How children learn and how we can impact their ability to retain information that they have been previously taught;
- That everything planned for and taught has value and purpose, thus equipping children with a body of knowledge which will help them to be successful in their future lives.
Our curriculum evolves in-line with current educational research and takes account of the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum Guidance (Development Matters) and The Primary National Curriculum. Approaches such as mastery in mathematics through The White Rose scheme of work and The Power of Reading in English is evidence of just some research-based approaches we use in our school. Furthermore, our emphasis on oracy and discussion in all subjects is an example of how the curriculum at Temple Grove caters to the needs of the children in our community.
Each academic year, all subjects are carefully planned and center on key themes and concepts; progression of skills documents in all subjects ensure children are building on previous learning and taking steps to readily improve. Due to this approach, children are readily able to articulate what they have learnt and can make links between the ideas taught across different subjects. Mastering key concepts and making parallels between things learned in varying subjects is key to our curriculum intent.
In order to further enrich the experiences our children have in school, we actively plan for experiential learning such as termly outings, visitors to school, residential visits, enrichment clubs and music and foreign language lessons taught in school.
Our Curriculum Implementation
Our curriculum is designed to centre upon key themes and concepts, with all subjects inter-linked by over-arching themes and ideas. These are carefully thought out to meet the needs of the pupils and are readily modified should observation and assessment suggest a change is necessary.
Although each subject is timetabled to be taught discretely, children are able to make links between the things that they have learned in – for example – history and English through the over-arching idea that runs through the termly plan. Current research suggests that children retain information better and master key ideas when subjects can be married together by clear commonalities. As such, we designed our curriculum to incorporate such an approach.
Power of Reading texts, central to English lessons at Temple Grove, are carefully selected so as to include the themes relevant to all other subjects. This text is pivotal to termly teaching content and provides the stimulus for which all other learning can draw upon.
In order to ‘hook’ children prior to the termly content planned for, each class begin a unit with a themed day. For example, children learning about The Greeks would come to school dressed as a person from this era and participate in experiential activities throughout the day, eating a lunch that may have been served during this period being just one example. Such activities create an enthusiasm and a thirst to want to learn more.
High-quality texts provide teachers and pupils with the opportunity to read aloud daily. At Temple Grove, we value the importance of all children being read to as well as them reading aloud to their peers. We recognise that fluency in reading – as well as developing effective oracy – enables children to fully access our curriculum and curriculums beyond. Central to our curriculum ethos is that children leave Temple Grove being able to read and write confidently, as well as being able to do both for purpose. Children are taught to read and write across a range of different text-types such as narrative, non-fiction and poetry.
Integral to all of the above are teachers being able to plan for, and deliver, quality first teaching and learning. At Temple Grove, we value the importance of teacher time to enable them to assess and plan effectively in order to deliver the content of the curriculum successfully. Teaching staff use our progression of skills documents, in conjunction with regular, ongoing assessment of learning, to ensure lessons are sequenced to meet the needs of each pupil, addressing misconceptions and providing children with new learning in every lesson.
The Impact of Our Curriculum
Our carefully designed and implemented curriculum has the following impact:
- Our children demonstrate resilience and are equipped to be successful in future endeavours;
- Our children are respectful, kind and care for one another;
- Our children make good progress from their starting points in both EYFS and Key Stage 1 and attain well in end of Key Stage assessments;
- Our children are exposed to a broad, engaging and purposeful curriculum which sparks their interest on a daily basis;
- Our children are able to express their feelings and emotions effectively and are both mentally and physically healthy;
- Our children have the necessary knowledge, skills and vocabulary to empower them as 21st century citizens.
See below for our current term curriculum maps.