Curriculum Overview

Seven Fields Primary School: Our Curriculum Approach

The Seven Fields Primary School Curriculum has been designed around our vision and with two main drivers. The first of these drivers links directly to our vision above and our ambition to ensure that our children leave Seven Fields Independent, Confident and Resilient. The second is our desire to give our children the wider opportunities they may not be able to experience otherwise.

These experiences were developed and agreed by staff using the DfE’s Activity Passports. We endeavour to facilitate children experiencing these opportunities through our curriculum and where we cannot deliver them in this way, we will provide them as extra-curricular activities. We will develop our children’s cultural capital! It is our aspiration that we use our curriculum to help us to prepare our children for the next step in their education and give them the foundations needed to be a successful citizen of the modern world.

We have ensured that our curriculum is right for the children in our school. At the heart of our curriculum is the National Curriculum. We have identified the Key Content and progression needed for each individual subject and have woven these together to create learning sequences that work towards a definitive end point, whether that be the end of a unit or transfer to the next key stage.

Accessibility, Equality, and Inclusion

At Seven Fields, we are fully committed to ensuring our curriculum is accessible to all. We recognise our statutory duties under the Equality Act 2010 and the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Regulations 2014. We proactively remove barriers to learning and celebration of diversity so that every pupil can thrive.

• The Equality Act 2010: We ensure that our curriculum does not discriminate against any pupil on the basis of protected characteristics. Our curriculum content promotes equality of opportunity, fosters positive relationships, and reflects a diverse world, ensuring all children see themselves represented in their learning.

• SEND Regulations 2014 & Accessibility: We ensure that pupils with disabilities or special educational needs have full access to the same broad and balanced curriculum as their peers. We make reasonable adjustments to our teaching environments, resources, and pedagogical approaches to ensure no child is disadvantaged.

A Highly Inclusive Environment

The curriculum we have designed is highly inclusive, catering for the unique needs of all learners. We provide an environment where all learners enjoy their education, feel valued, and make very good progress across all subjects.

• Targeted Support & Scaffolds: Pupils who require extra help are encouraged and given targeted support, adaptive teaching, and specific scaffolds to embed learning. This allows them to develop at their own pace and learn in a style that best suits their individual needs.

• Challenge for All: Pupils at all levels are helped to achieve their potential. Those who are most able are challenged through appropriate extension activities that widen and deepen their understanding of subject matter.

Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

In Early Years, our intent is to provide a curriculum which values and promotes all areas of learning. In the early years of the Foundation Stage, we focus on the prime areas and move on to the specific areas when the children are ready.

It is our aim that we create an environment of learning and discovery. We provide children with ‘awe and wonder’ moments whenever we can so as to stimulate exciting, engaging, and enriched learning experiences that infect our school community with curiosity and the unending love of learning.

As a school, we demand nothing but the best for our children and, through our curriculum and its delivery, we will ensure our children get the best possible learning we can provide for them. They will want to learn. They will want to be curious and find out more. They will be Independent, Confident and Resilient young people who will strive to achieve their very best at all times!

Sequencing and "Golden Threads"

Subject leaders have developed documents that allow us to sequence learning in a way that shows how learning builds as children move through the school, while also providing a basic structure upon which termly or unit learning can be expanded and developed. We call these documents our Key Content.

Key Content has been identified for every subject in every year group, including EYFS. In Years 1–6, depending on the subject content, we have separated the key content within years into either strands or domains of that given subject, or into termly units. This has allowed us to demonstrate how learning builds across the school. Where a subject is also a discipline (e.g., History or Geography), we have identified the key knowledge of the subject discipline so that teachers can plan for the development of those subjects as disciplines.

We have identified two Golden Threads in our curriculum:

1. Enrichment: We ensure our children get the experiences needed to help develop their SMSC (Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural) aspects of learning. This gives children experiences they are likely not to have any other opportunity to experience.

2. Language Development: We have developed the key elements of language development from EYFS to Year 6. Within each unit in each term, we ensure we concentrate on one element of our language development so that over the course of a school year, the children are exposed to the full range of language development opportunities and the key vocabulary needed to fully access learning.

Research-Driven Pedagogy

Any curriculum developments we make are backed by solid research. In recent times, this has included training on Cognitive Science in the classroom. This led to a change in how we build learning sequences and how we ensure that children are learning—defined as a long-term change in memory.

• Retrieval Practice: We use retrieval practice in a variety of forms to help children remember and do more.

• The Forgetting Curve: We have embedded the use of low-stakes testing to recap prior learning, both as the children build upon that learning and spaced over time, to help children overcome the 'forgetting curve'.

• Cognitive Load: We have adapted our delivery of the curriculum so that we are not overloading children in the moment, focusing solely on the key knowledge needed for the children to understand more complex ideas and undertake more complex tasks.

Assessment

• Core Subjects (English and Maths): We use a range of assessments to guide our teaching and allow us to evaluate learning, identifying gaps in understanding and adapting as necessary. These assessments include the use of standardised testing, diagnostic testing, and teachers’ own professional judgement. We collect assessment information three times a year at the end of each term.

• The Wider Curriculum: We use our key content in each subject to make evaluative judgements for every child in Years 1–6. We assess how well the children have learnt the key content statements in the penultimate week of each unit. This allows us to re-teach content that has not been learnt sufficiently or to broaden and extend the children’s experience with the subject matter.

These judgements are made each half-term and recorded to build up a holistic understanding of each child’s achievement in each subject. At the end of each year, an assessment judgement is made based on our key content and yearly expectations to judge whether a child is reaching the expected standard. It also allows us to tailor learning in subsequent years to address misconceptions or unlearn content.

Leadership of the Curriculum

Our curriculum is led by Subject Leaders who hold overall responsibility for their subject. Each subject leader has been chosen because they either have a specialism in their subject or a distinct passion to develop it.

The most important of their responsibilities is ensuring children are learning their subject securely. Subject leaders undertake regular monitoring activities as well as providing targeted support to colleagues to develop their subject knowledge. We deeply value the opportunity for teachers to talk together with subject leaders, and as such, we provide structured opportunities every term for these collaborative conversations to take place.