Thornton Hough Primary School

                                                     'Learning for Life'

Our Curriculum Intent
At Thornton Hough Primary School, our caring family ethos and dedication to pastoral support, develops happy and secure learners who are able to access the curriculum with confidence. We believe that our curriculum is everything from the moment a child walks in through the school gates - all their daily experiences and their interactions with adults and their peers. We want our children to be responsible and independent members of society with the confidence and curiosity to be life-long learners.
We are passionate about delivering a broad and balanced curriculum that develops thoughtful, resilient and curious children who are excited about learning.
Fundamental to this is our over-arching belief that nurturing children’s self-esteem and pride in themselves, and each other, helps to build a secure platform for learning and meeting the challenges of the modern world.
Our aim is to provide exciting and meaningful opportunities for our children, shaped by their needs and our locality, with the aim to ensure every single child flourishes socially and academically. At the same time our aim is to develop the morals and values that will allow our children to leave us as considerate citizens, prepared for meeting new people and facing new challenges and possibilities with strength and confidence.
We know that the best learning will take place when it is exciting, relevant, well-ordered and enriched by activities that take place inside and outside the classroom. We want to ensure opportunities for learning that are language-rich and driven by moral issues and social dilemma, sparking the children’s imagination, drawing on real-life situations which nurture independent thinking skills.
A key aim is to develop the children’s understanding of a range of values (values such as resilience, tolerance, kindness, respect and determination) that permeate the curriculum and are returned to and built upon throughout their journey. Developing an understanding of these values provides the children with a toolkit to use when approaching learning and social situations.

Learning for Life means that our children will:

• learn and apply the skills and values needed for lifelong learning so that every child has the best opportunity to make a positive difference to society
• achieve the best possible academic standards, whatever their ability or their background
• value themselves and each other
• be inspired and think creatively
•  open up their eyes to the world, developing new interests as they journey with us
• be happy, mentally and physically healthy, and understand the links between the two
• be able to tackle the challenges relevant in today’s society and those of the future
• be equipped with the skills, language and vocabulary to allow them to engage fully with real-life problems and to empower them to act positively in response to them
• have pride in their local community and to develop a curiosity, understanding, appreciation and tolerance of communities that differ from theirs, developing their cultural capital
• develop ambition and aspiration whilst being mindful of the needs of others
• We recognise that progression in learning is developed by returning to and building upon key knowledge, concepts and values over time. With this is mind our aim is for our children to master a range of concepts, values and skills whilst providing a tangible love for learning and allowing the platform for ‘Learning for Life’.

Our Curriculum Implementation
1. PSHE and emotional well-being
PSHE sits at the heart of our curriculum. This is designed to promote and nurture our pupils’ self-esteem and social awareness, underpinning all other learning. PSHE is also taught discretely, within a bespoke PSHE framework.
We provide a rigorously-planned programme of learning through which our pupils acquire the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to keep themselves healthy and safe. Our PSHE curriculum enables staff to tackle barriers to learning and raise aspirations for our pupils. We teach through active engagement in learning rather than the children receiving information passively and we provide opportunities for children to consider and clarify their values and beliefs and to rehearse and develop through role-playing real-life situations. Children who need a little additional support in this area work with our Emotional Literacy Support Assistant and/or the ‘Thumbs Up’ team.
2. Values-Based Education
At Thornton Hough Primary School we are passionate about supporting and guiding the children's social and moral development. The Values-based approach works alongside our 7 Golden Rules to provide the children with a shared vocabulary and understanding of important positive human values such as respect, honesty, resilience and tolerance. Adults are encouraged to model the values at all times. The values are addressed directly through lessons and assemblies but also permeate the whole curriculum. For example, in Y6 the children learn about World War Two, looking at the concept of persecution, and through this theme develop their understanding of the concepts of courage, tolerance, resilience and co-operation. We believe this approach creates a strong learning experience that enhances academic achievement and develops students' social and relationship skills that last throughout their lives. As a school, we have chosen 22 core values to introduce to the children over a cycle of 2 years.
3. Carefully-sequenced curriculum
Of paramount importance to all, is an expectation of well thought out quality first teaching and learning, delivered by all. Subject leaders ensure that long-term plans are sequenced so that children build knowledge and skills over time – both building skills and knowledge within the year group curriculum, but also building on, and making connections with, prior knowledge from other years in school. Staff identify the key knowledge milestones that they want the children to learn during the course of the theme and then ensure there are plenty of opportunities for the children to practise and apply this knowledge in a range of different contexts, so that they achieve deep, long term learning.

4. High-Quality Teaching

We know that the key to children's success is the quality of their learning. High quality teaching is essential to achieving the best outcomes for all pupils, particularly the most disadvantaged. Our range of teaching approaches ensures long-term retention of knowledge, fluency in key skills, and confident use of metacognitive strategies, with self-reflection and evaluation being vital components of their learning.

• Cognitive strategies include subject-specific strategies or memorisation techniques such as methods to solve problems in maths.
• Metacognitive strategies are what we use to monitor or control our cognition, for example checking whether our approach to solving a mathematics problem worked or considering which cognitive strategy is the best fit for a task. (Educational Endowment Foundation 2022)

A range of approaches such as explicit instruction, scaffolding and flexible grouping are all key components of high-quality teaching and learning for pupils, particularly when considering our approach  to children with specific learning needs. Teachers are mindful of the differing needs within their classes and adapt the level of scaffolding and support skillfully for the needs of the children.

Teachers think carefully about the prior knowledge that children bring to lessons. Judgements of starting points are based on effective communication with previous teachers, gap documents created by subject leaders, subject progression documents and start of unit knowledge harvests. This allows for a smooth learning process which is pitched without unnecessary delay in learning and, likewise, without missing out any vital stepping stones in their learning journey.  Anticipating common misconceptions and addressing them without delay as a class or individually is key to supporting our children.

5. Hooks and theme days/trips
To engage, immerse and ‘hook’ the children in their learning experiences, every classroom learning environment reflects the theme that the children are learning about. For example, if the theme is Rainforests, the classroom is turned into a rainforest environment, for the Victorians, the children and staff experience a day in role in a Victorian classroom. The Year 5 and 6 children visit the Stockport Air Raid Shelters during their ‘Blitz’ topic where they go into role as an evacuee for the day and explore the underground tunnels. This learning environment is not only used as a tool for engagement, but also to support and deepen the learning experiences taking place in the classroom.
6. Wider opportunities
Children are provided with opportunities to experience new things such as learning to play the ukulele in Year 3 and experiencing a wide range of introductions to instruments through the First Access music provision in
Year 4. Children also have the opportunity to access individual instrumental lessons in woodwind, brass or string with a peripatetic music teacher.
Children are encouraged to develop their speaking and listening skills from when they are 4 years old. Children showcase their own areas of expertise and interest in their timetabled ‘Show and Tell’ presentations which take place for all age groups. These sessions allow the children to plan for and talk about a topic of their choice with the chance to inspire others to take up new hobbies. Our beautiful stage is the hub of our school. Opportunities to take part in plays, productions and assemblies are plentiful and the children develop a strong confidence in performing in front of an audience. Each year we come together as one big family to perform a Christmas play on stage with every child involved. The stage is also used for class assembly productions and whole school performances such as for our Harvest Festival. Our junior-aged children attend the annual Wirral Speech and Drama festival where they express themselves wonderfully through performance poetry. The annual school chess competition provides intra-school tournament experience which feeds into local and national finals. All children are given the opportunity to take part in inter-school sports with events including indoor athletics, cricket, netball and cross country. A range of Cross –curricular activities are available for the children based on carefully identified areas for development and activities identified by the children themselves.
7. Quality texts
Quality texts are integral to our curriculum approach, as we recognise that fluency in reading enables children to have access to the full curriculum. We believe it is our role to ensure children leave us being able to articulate themselves clearly, and read and write confidently and effectively. Quality texts are chosen each half term to drive learning in English and as the basis for the teaching of writing. We ensure as far as possible that the texts chosen as the driver for English link to the termly theme. During the term, children will experience narrative, poetry and non-fiction texts.
8. Continuous Professional Development and Shared Practice
As a school staff we are developing our curriculum with a focus on ensuring opportunities for learning to ‘stick’ in long term memory, and we are exploring ways in which we can structure our curriculum most effectively to ensure that children maximise their mastery of concepts.
Continuing Professional Development for all staff is a priority to ensure the skills and knowledge necessary to deliver the highest standards across the entire curriculum. Subject leaders access training to ensure the necessary
expertise to play a pivotal role in both the design and delivery of their subject area. This allows subjects that are planned for to ensure clear progression of skills and knowledge across all year groups, underpinned by a consistent approach to assessment. Key knowledge is revisited and developed year on year, so that there is real depth of learning.
Each subject leader has a named ‘shadow’ staff member that supports them. Staff work collectively on areas of the curriculum that form the priorities for whole school development.

Our Curriculum Impact for ‘Learning for Life’
Our children make excellent progress both academically and socially. Children are fully aware of their mental and physical well-being and the need to nurture both. Our children are resilient in the face of challenge having learned in an environment that encourages perseverance – one in which mistakes happen and we learn from them. Our children are engaged in their learning and can talk confidently about it, making links between subject areas. They develop confident verbal and written skills that allow them to debate, to convince and to explain. Children flourish within our values-led environment and developing a strong understanding of, and ability to model, the morals and values that are taught discretely as well as woven into and throughout our curriculum. All develop new interests, talents and conquer new goals, making new achievements throughout.
As staff we work together to reflect on our curriculum and make adaptions where we believe it will be of benefit to the children. Careful and detailed analysis of assessment for learning measures children’s progression throughout. Children learn key information and skills that are specific to their stage of development, focused on breadth and mastery before moving on to the next stage. Children leave for secondary school with high attainment and the academic and social skills that set the foundation for life-long learning.