Junior

The Junior Curriculum has been designed to provide a broad and balanced, knowledge-rich and skills based primary curriculum. Its content is delivered through a range of subject-specific projects, which last either a full term or half term. Overarching topic themes are History or Geography focused. Alongside these topics, accompany companion projects in Science, Art, Art and Design, Computer Science, PSHE and RE. We continue the norm that subject-specialist teachers teach PE, Music, Drama and French so that they can continue to build on each child’s knowledge and skills learnt in prerequisite years. Children in the Junior Department are encouraged to create their own ‘opportunities’ in areas of the curriculum that they feel innately good at or interested in. They can do this through joining after school clubs. It is our obligation to nurture whatever talent a child possesses and we aim to assist in the development of, and actively promote, good social and behavioural skills, sensitivity and strong initiative - essential characteristics in every well-adjusted individual.

Teachers in the Junior Department encourage children to develop their own independence through having ‘excellence’ of themselves and each other. In addition to this, teachers continue to offer a nurturing environment to provide equity for all. Pupils hold each other accountable for their personal and social development through following the school's strict code of conduct: Excellence, Compassion, Determination, Opportunity & Service. Our school’s values are thread throughout all that we do to ensure our children become equipped for the 21st century developing responsible, respectful and active citizens.

Our curriculum comes from Cornerstones Curriculum Maestro, which puts spiritual, moral, social and cultural education at the heart of its curriculum. It has been designed with three structural tiers. Each tier builds on the previous to create interconnected layers.These interconnected layers provide a robust framework that ensures connectivity across the curriculum with direct links back to the National Curriculum programmes of study.

Tier one comprises ‘Big ideas’ -global aims.

Tier two are the overarching ‘concepts’ and ‘aspects.’ A ‘concept’ is an abstract idea within a subject and an ‘aspect’ is a particular part or feature of a subject.

Tier three, is the programme of study. Concepts and aspects are broken down into smaller component parts or ‘chunks’ to form a cohesive progression framework. The progression framework runs as a ‘mixed-age group’ from Nursery to Year 6 and includes knowledge and skills that children need to know and be able to do in order to make progress.

English

In the Junior Department, English is broken into four dimensions: Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation; Composition, Word Recognition and Reading Comprehension. We have a firm belief that all children have the ability to read and write proficiently regardless of their economic background or educational needs. For that reason, we have carefully designed our English curriculum so that all children have the opportunity to thrive in literacy providing a breadth of exposure to different literary texts that link to their current topics.

Reading: children master their skills to retrieve and record, interpret information, synthesis and summarise what they have read. They develop their prosody of reading through fluency and choral practise. Children are exposed to a variety of genres based on their current Topics to allow them to make connections and inferences in their other subjects.

VCPS: children explore etymology and morphology of new words they come across. They develop a skills based toolkit of age appropriate grammatical structures and use of punctuation whilst revisiting ones from previous years.

English Composition: children learn the process of writing through a skills based approach. They are taught through explicit modelling of ‘writers' thought’. Children demonstrate their understanding of the English language, genre of writing and evolving literary flair by planning, drafting, revising and editing their work before publishing it.

Maths

Mathematics is an integral part of the curriculum in the Junior Department. There is a great emphasis on teachers identifying misconceptions and regularly responding to children so that we can quickly close gaps in the chronology of their mathematical knowledge. With this, we have chosen to use the scheme White Rose Maths so that the knowledge and skills have been systematically mapped across school from Nursery through to Year 6. Children are given regular opportunities to apply mathematical facts, concepts, methods and strategies that they have learnt. We do this by using a Maths Mastery approach that places emphasis on conceptual understanding before procedural knowledge. Our aim is for children to become proficient mathematicians so that they can deepen their confidence in the subject through reasoning and problem solving building on the school value of determination and opportunity.

There are two progression cycles to the WIS Primary Curriculum. The overarching projects are:

Lower Key Stage 2:

Cycle A: Through the Ages -History, Rocks Relics and Rumbles -Geography and Emperors and Empires -History
Cycle B: Invasion -History, Misty Mountain Winding River -Geography and Ancient Civilisation -History

Upper Key Stage 2:

Cycle A: Dynamic Dynasties -History, Sow Grow and Farm -Geography and Ground Breaking Greeks -History

Cycle B: Maafa -History, Frozen Kingdoms -Geography and Britain at War -History

Science Science Topics in Primary follow a two year cycle from the mixed age group Cornerstones Curriculum. In 2022, all year groups will start with Cycle B following Cycle A in the next academic year. The progression of topics that are taught have been mapped with Cornerstone’s consultants to ensure the underpinning knowledge and skills are built upon year on year. There is a minimum of 2 Science topics per year group per academic year. With the nature of the Cornerstones Curriculum (we have created curriculum that combines a project lead and subject lead curriculum) our driving topic for that term is the overarching concept which will link all planning and learning for English: ie wider reading on the topic is explored in guided reading. Likewise, in English suggested texts and genres are unpicked and written again using their knowledge gained from Science. Teachers use the Cornerstones Curriculum Maestro platform to sequence and plan their lessons. These topics have been created by experts within the Cornerstones team. All topics ‘projects’ follow the cycle of: Memorable Experience, Engage, Develop, Innovate and Express. Each area within the cycle is aimed to explore previous knowledge, develop underpinning knowledge, innovate their own perceptions and inferences and lastly, express the knowledge gained. Teachers can use the previous skill/ previous knowledge tool on the platform to see how the each pupil performed in their previous years. This is to support teachers when planning should they need to revisit previous skills or build on them. Teachers use questioning or partner talk at the beginning of lessons to support their understanding of children’s previous knowledge. They also ask children to look back through their previous work recap what they have already learnt. Subject Knowledge is taught first, then Disciplinary knowledge, which is broken into mini lessons exploring each aspect eg: one single lesson may be on learning to create a hypothesis or a single lesson may teach how to draw conclusions from data. These are taught before the Innovate aspect where they carry out a formal investigation to carry out these skills. SEND Pupils SEND pupils are given scaffolded tasks to support their learning: practical activities, pupil-coaching, acting out, singing to remember, graphic organizers, word banks, scribes while they express verbally.
Teachers use ongoing formative assessment when they mark their daily books. They also use questioning at the beginning of lessons to clarify and revisit previous knowledge. In some lessons –depending on the nature of the lesson- a model of: model, guided practice, AFL and Independent work is followed for teachers to assess them formatively. At the end of the teaching cycle of Science ‘express’ lessons are designed for children to impart their knowledge by summarizing and imparting what they have learnt. They sit a formal exam at the end of the term to provide summative data on their Science topic and are given a revision week to revisit key knowledge and skills using a graphic organizer and quizzes. Acquisition of knowledge and skills The essential skills and knowledge are shared and stored on the Cornerstones Curriculum Maestro Platform under Design and Lead Lesson plans have these built in prior to being planned. Children write the skill of their lesson in their books as the beginning of each lesson. Learning environment and resources Classrooms utilize walls as working walls to store key information or vocabulary that scaffolds children’s learning. The inclusion lead (SENDCO) is working with the staff to support their planning of scaffolding for children that require support.