Bradfield Dungworth Primary School
Curriculum at Bradfield Dungworth
'Curriculum should help children make deeper and fuller understanding of their own exeprience' - Lilian Katz
Our Vision at Bradfield Dungworth
About our Curriculum
At Bradfield Dungworth Primary School, we aim to provide a rich curriculum that is broad and balanced, and meets the needs of the children in our community. We aim to motivate and inspire children through a curriculum that engages and challenges all learners.
Our curriculum is designed to deepen knowledge and develop skills, with literacy at the heart, ensuring effective progression within each subject discipline and across all year groups. Our ambition is to develop the ‘whole child’, nurturing children’s talents and celebrating their achievements and successes, both academically and in areas such as ‘The Arts’ and ‘PE and Sport’.
Our 'FAMILY' values, alongside our 'Golden Rules' , are at the core of our curriculum and all that we do at Bradfield Dungworth.
Implementation
We implement an inclusive curriculum that meets the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum. Our curriculum is well-planned and provides literacy-rich, cross-curricular opportunities.
As a small, rural school we reflect on our curriculum each year and change it according to the classes that we have. Often we do not have one year group in class and it is common for learners to move from a straight-year class to a split-year class. Our curriculum coverage is considered carefully each year to ensure breadth and depth for learners.
Each term, we have a driver project in all classes that focuses our curriculum to meet the needs of all chidlren.
Knowledge and vocabulary are fundamental within our curriculum. Lessons are well-planned to develop and increase children’s knowledge, building on prior experiences and making connections in their learning. Children are immersed in and exposed to a diet of vocabulary, which is high-level and subject-specific, to extend their breadth of language.
Parents are provided with ‘knowledge mats’ at the start of all History, Geography and Science units, to encourage discussion with their child and deepen their knowledge and breadth of vocabulary.
Our curriculum is delivered through highly effective ‘quality first teaching’. Enrichment opportunities, including outdoor learning, inspirational visitors and exciting educational visits, provide our children with rich experiences and enhance teaching, learning and knowledge. Knowledge and skills are accurately assessed against ‘Age-Related Descriptors’ and ‘knowledge-based learning objectives’.
Our curriculum promotes children’s Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development, ensuring that they are reflective and responsible citizens. Fundamental British Values are actively promoted in order to prepare the children for life in Modern Britain.
Our curriculum is continually shaped and developed to meet children’s interests and needs, and is supported by practices based on credible research.
Impact
Our literacy-rich curriculum ensures that children are knowledgeable and skilled, achieve well and make excellent progress at each stage of their education. Through the breadth and depth that our curriculum offers, children have strong character traits and are rounded and grounded, confident and resilient, and well-equipped for the future. Our curriculum enables children to become articulate and enthusiastic learners, creative and physically competent, with high aspirations and ambition.
Curriculum Overview 2024-26 - on it's way!
Why Assessment for Learning?
“Learning isn’t linear—we need to forget things, revisit them,
get things wrong and correct them for deep learning to take
place” - Mary Myatt (The Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence)
¨ Research (Dylan Wiliam, Black and Wiliam) shows that formative assessment is a powerful learning tool that supports learner independence and engagement, increases learner confidence, reinforces learning, and creates lifelong learners. Teachers at BD encourage a classroom culture of “giving it a go” and not being afraid of making mistakes, emphasising that mistakes are opportunities for deeper learning.
¨ Quizzes, multiple choices, spaced learning mats, and knowledge organisers are used to assist teachers in understanding how embedded learning is and also to identify where gaps and misconceptions are. Teachers aim to create opportunities for high challenge and low threat.
¨ Teachers are clear on the endpoints in a sequence of study and identify these in medium-term planning grids. They will alter the sequence when necessary to allow learners to successfully achieve these endpoints. The aim is for teachers to still follow the coherent sequence of study, but to adjust accordingly and respond to the needs of the class.
¨ Medium term plans are being used to identify the crucial content for SEN—what is absolutely necessary for ALL children in class to know by the end of the teaching sequence.
¨ Summative assessments are used at the end of a block of learning together with the ongoing retrieval practice and assessment for learning to help teachers determine what has been learned.
¨ The BD mantra is Know More — Do More — Remember More
We use a range of formative assessment techniques to support learning and to close gaps. Some examples include:
