Enjoy achieving together to be the best that we can be!
At Usworth Colliery, we go places, do things, meet people and learn new things.
Our pupils learn best through experiential learning and our curriculum is built around this. We provide the pupils with experiences and opportunities they may not otherwise access. Through this approach, pupils are offered a curriculum which is exciting, engaging and ambitiously designed to give all pupils knowledge and understanding that they need to succeed in the world. To widen the aspirations of our young learners they are regularly exposed to a range of experiences that put their new knowledge into a real world context and help them contextualise what they are learning.
To promote resilience and independence our curriculum encourages pupils to adopt a growth mind-set in order to learn from mistakes and develop as learners.
Our curriculum is based on the expectations of the national curriculum and is designed to be both progressive and matched to the needs and interests of our pupils. It starts with what the pupils already know and what they would like to know, added to this is what they need to know and from this a bespoke and flexible curriculum is created. Long term plans are designed to be developmental and progressive and each new topic or learning experience builds on the skills knowledge and understanding previously taught.
To support the unique needs of our pupils the curriculum has vocabulary and reading at its core. As pupils progress through school, children’s vocabulary is improved through consistent exposure to new words from age appropriate texts and taught subject specific vocabulary. Teaching builds on previously learnt vocabulary and the acquisition of this allows the children to discuss and reason within the subjects. Pupils access a wide variety of high-quality written sources to develop their reading skills and spark their interest and enthusiasm for learning. Children are encouraging and empowered to develop their own lines of enquiry asking their own questions about the subject they are studying.
Curriculum Implementation
Subject Leaders drive the curriculum to deliver the intent through an increased understanding of how well each subject is delivered, by providing documentation to support planning and delivery of the subject and through CPD and targeted support where necessary.
Leaders support teachers to plan well pitched, progressive series of lessons
Leaders develop and implement a curriculum based on national curriculum expectations and the five key principles of our intent
- Experiential
- Progressive
- Reading at the core
- Vocabulary acquisition as an integral part of the learning
- A growth mind-set approach to develop resilience
Leaders provide staff with a long term plan that sets out the key skills, knowledge and understanding to be taught in each year group across the year, termly and in some cases half termly.
- English: long term plan
- Reading: Comprehension skills progression overview for Guided Reading and Reading Long Term Plan Maths: TfC CFC document
- Foundation Subjects: Key Skills Knowledge and Understanding document
- Leaders provide staff with a vocabulary progression document that sets out where new subject specific vocabulary is taught and what prior vocabulary knowledge pupils should have acquired
- For each subject area leaders provide support materials such as suggestion lists of possible experiences, activities that support objectives websites schemes etc.
- Leaders support staff with short term planning either by unit or topic through CPD, personalised support in PPA, extra planning time and/or staff meeting time.
- Science and Topic: Planning Grids and Pacers
- Maths S Planning
- Literacy: Unit Planning Grid
- Reading: Guided Reading Grid
- Daily planning is paper free and staff are encouraged to plan though screens focussing on delivery opportunities for modelling and quality resources
- All Leaders monitor their subject though learning walks, work scrutiny, pupil voice, teacher feedback, assessment scrutiny and data analysis. Whole school CPD and individual support is identified from this monitoring and Leads facilitate this support.
Staff plan and deliver lessons that reflect the intent of the curriculum
- Teachers use the support materials provided by leaders to deliver lessons that are progressive in terms of building on prior knowledge and applying previously taught skills and understanding
- Teachers assess and monitor progress throughout the lessons and adapt immediate teaching and future teaching accordingly
- Teachers plan for support and challenge in all lessons for all pupils though a range scaffolds and challenge activities.
- Teachers use the progression in vocabulary documents to implicitly plan for and teach new vocabulary as well as revisiting and applying the vocabulary already learned
- Teachers aim to increase depth of learning rather than speed of learning though a growth mind-set approach which promotes an everyone can achieve mentality where children access the same work but are supported to record their learning at an appropriate level and others are or challenged to think more deeply about or explain more clearly their understanding
- Teaching assistants and teachers provide immediate intervention where necessary following a lesson to support children who have not yet grasped the concept fully and enable them to access the next piece of learning alongside their peers
- Planned interventions are provided when pupils need to catch up or where a gap in learning has been identified and can be addressed.
- Teachers assess attainment at the end of each teaching sequence or unit and record this as DNA ticks on the school database, Pupil Asset. These assessments are revisited and modified throughout the year as pupils make progress. These assessments inform future planning, intervention provision and summative end of year assessments.
Outdoor Learning at Usworth Colliery Primary School.
Through Outdoor Learning children learn through what they do, through what they encounter and through what they discover. Participants learn about the outdoors, themselves and each other, while also learning outdoor skills. Active learning readily develops the learning skills of enquiry, experiment, feedback, reflection, review and cooperative learning. It is also essential for accelerated learning and development.
Useful SATs Information
Please click on the links below to access the Government website and information about the national curriculum tests (often referred to as SATS).
National curriculum assessments: information for parents
For further information please click the links below.
The KS1 and KS2 Writing exemplification documents are available here:
Teacher Asessment Exemplification KS1 English Writing
Teacher Assessment Exemplification KS2 English Writing