What is the curriculum?

The term curriculum refers to WHAT is being taught in school, this includes our subject content and lessons, along with any other enrichment activities we provide. Our curriculum is purposefully designed to ensure the children at Barnham receive integrated, coherent learning experiences that contribute towards their personal and academic learning and development, both now and in the future. 

We have recently undertaken curriculum development development work to ensure that our content, coverage, sequencing and progression supports these core aims.

How is Our Curriculum Organised?

At Barnham CEVC Primary School we are dedicated to teaching a broad, balanced and aspirational curriculum. We are constantly reviewing our curriculum development priorities, this ensures that our curriculum decisions are responsive and strategic. 

It is more important than ever that our teaching reflects the needs of our children and takes into account the impact of the global pandemic on their learning and wellbeing. 

The main aims of our most recent curriculum review were to:

• calibrate the long-term curriculum offer after another year of disruption and
• to see if it were possible to maximise the teaching time in a school day

As a result, we have made changes to our curriculum structure and timetabling from October 2021. We are delighted to be working with Unity Schools Partnership and have fully launched our updated curriculum known as CUSP (Curriculum with Unity Schools Partnership) which is underpinned by the latest education and cognitive science research.

New for September 2021

Following some changes to the timings of the school day from October 2021, each class timetable has been very carefully structured to maximise learning time. We continue to provide a knowlegde-rich curriculum for all our pupils. We have moved away from a topic approach, each subject is now taught discretely. This allows us to:

• build securely on previous knowledge and skills
• enable pupils to become absorbed in and develop depth of understanding within a subject
• help us better address any gaps as a result of disrupted education

Our long term sequence for each year group has deliberate planned links between subjects that complement each other.

• Our English curriculum includes dedicated daily reading lessons in Key Stage 2 alongside a writing session. The English offer is planned with a rich literature spine with ambitious books to inspire and challenge pupils. It is carefully mapped to enable children to experience a diverse range of social, moral and ethical issues as well as a wide range of authors. 
• Our writing curriculum draws on taught content from History, Geography and Science and from the study of core texts from the literature spine.

• The wider curriculum subjects of Science, Geography, History, Computing and Art & Design are taught as a series of modules which are frequently revisited within each academic year, whilst also being built upon in future years. This is to ensure that core knowledge is securely acquired through clear teaching sequences that are focused, interwoven and built around regular retrieval practice. We have increased the frequency of teaching and length of Science modules for this academic year. This is so that we are able to respond directly to the challenge of time and gaps in knowledge resulting from recent disruption to learning.

• The arts have also been given greater emphasis with Art/DT and music being taught weekly. We will continue to teach RE weekly across the school.

Our curriculum is vocabulary focused and aims to equip the children with a wealth of academic and technical language required to talk about their learning in a precise manner, across the curriculum. Knowledge organisers are used within learning modules to support vocabulary development. 

Our curriculum provides children with memorable experiences, visits and visitors from which they can learn. It is designed to encourage them to view the world outside of Barnham with excitement and intrigue and to set their sights on an ambitious future.