Our Curriculum Intent...

At the Beacon Primary Academy our curriculum is based on what we believe our children need from us to support them in being successful, thriving young people and future adults. The diagram below summarises the views of our school community and what we believe are the essential ingredients of our curriculum. 

We want to help each child become:

• resilient and capable learners
• enterprising and creative contributors
• healthy and confident individuals
• respectful and informed citizens

       ...that will enable them to become independent adults.

 

This will enable our children to be...

*prepared for their future lives *secure key knowledge *be given real experiences*

 *have the opportunity to apply their knowledge in a range of contexts*

 

A key component of our curriculum development is to ensure that the children can have the opportunity to...

*revisit and build on prior learning *ensure key facts and vocabulary are secured*

 

We will do this by supporting, guiding and inspiring our children through excellent teaching practices that expose the children to opportunities to teach specific skills:

By working with our families, we create an aspirational environment and academy community where everyone is valued and successes are celebrated.

As part of the Greenwood Academies Trust we benefit from being part of a wider community. The Curriculum Leaders meet termly to share best practice, ideas for curriculum development and provide challenge across the academies.

Our Re-connection Curriculum

 

Following our full return to school, adjustments have been made to our provision. These focus on:

• Ensuring that our pupils are fully supported with their social and emotional needs.
  • Daily ‘emotion’ check in with pupils.
  • Increased PSHE discussion time in classes – providing opportunities to talk, express their feelings and connect and support each other.
  • Close monitoring of pupils to ensure pastoral support for individuals was provided, as required.
  • Increased number of ‘team’ activities to provide regular opportunities for pupils to ‘re-connect’ with each other.
• Adapting the curriculum content
  • Staff teams reviewed the curriculum content to ensure that the children had increased low stakes, collaboration focused activities.
  • Staff teams used their knowledge of pupil engagement during the lockdown period to inform their future plans – these have been adapted to reflect the learning that was missed, not covered by all pupils and what can be linked with other areas of learning.
  • The Curriculum Overview document and Medium-Term Planning was ‘ragged’ to provide a clear summary of coverage, during and following the lockdown period.
  • Medium Term Planning  have been carefully considered in teams, in liaison with the Curriculum Leader, to ensure that the content focuses on key priority areas and also has breadth of subject content and experiences. The revisiting of learning has been, and remains, a key element of this.
  • Missed learning due to the lockdown period cannot all be recovered. The staff teams have a clear understanding of any learning content that has not been covered and this will be addressed in the curriculum plans for the year(s) ahead.
  • The staff team understand the importance of a clear sequence of learning. They build the planned learning steps on the needs of their pupils and adapt these, as required, for individuals. Interventions are provided to pupils who need additional support to maximise their potential, whatever their ability level.
  • Our pupils with identified SEND needs have had their IEP (Individual Educational Plans) reviewed and amended so ensure that these reflect their current requirements.
  • Academy leaders recognised that Writing would be a priority area due to the feedback from parents and their own experiences during the lockdown period. This resulted in leaders investing in a programme called The Write Stuff – this further enhances our existing approach to the teaching of Writing and adds further structure and consistency. This training was completed by all class-based staff and was implemented as soon as the children returned to school.
• A CatchUp Plan
  • This was implemented to maximise the impact of the additional funding provided by the DfE. This plan is available on the Academy website. The aim of this plan is to ensure rigorous support is provided to pupils to target their learning gaps and to support them in making as much progress as possible.

 

If you require any further details on our Curriculum you can visit the Class pages for each Term.