Curriculum Overview

Our Curriculum Intent Statement

Our Curricular Intentions:

At Barden Primary School it is essential that we provide a memorable, rich and creative curriculum, that allows children to first thrive, and then succeed. The surrounding locality brings both richness and challenge. We also recognise the need to create a sense of aspiration that will open the eyes of our pupils to the diverse and exciting opportunities that lie ahead of them. If the children are to truly fulfil their potential, the school must ensure that pupils have a rich vocabulary which contributes to their ability to communicate effectively. We believe that an exciting childhood should be essential for children and therefore we seek to create a programme of enrichment that has the capacity to transport our learners so that they are able to view their world with a sense of excitement, awe and wonder. Our curriculum is built upon carefully sequenced knowledge and skills (including substantive and disciplinary knowledge) which support our pupils to know more, remember more and ultimately be able to apply more. Alongside this, the school's context, including issues arising from our pupils' cultural capital and the locality of our school, play a central role in the decisions we make and the curriculum that we provide.

Our Implementation Strategies:

In order to fulfil the above intentions, our curriculum will be supported by a strong network of subject leaders. We will ensure that teachers have a subject knowledge that allows all subjects to be taught with passion and rigour. Additionally, our assessment structures will allow teachers to plan for continuity and progression.

At Barden, we use a range of carefully selected, validated schemes along with tailor-made units of work to ensure that our curriculum makes clear the identified end points required for pupils to make progress against national standards.

The Learning Challenge Concept

At Barden Primary School we have adopted a Learning Challenge concept for teaching within the foundation subjects, which is built around the principle of greater learner involvement. It requires deep thinking and encourages learners to work using a question as the starting point. The Learning Challenge approach is used as a structure and ethos for curriculum design. In designing the curriculum, teachers and learners use a prime learning challenge, expressed as a question, as the starting point. Using the information gained from pre- learning tasks, the new National Curriculum and the school’s context, a series of subsidiary challenges are then planned. We utilise the extensive and high quality resources in and around our fabulous Campus setting to ensure that our Learning Challenge Curriculum provides exciting and meaningful experiences beyond the four walls of the classroom. We passionately promote healthy lifestyles and an active school community.

In terms of implementation, each unit ensures that there is time spent on ignighting prior knowledge (link it); focus on new learning (learn it); regular checkpoints to ensure children are keeping up (check it); an opportunity for pupils to reflect on their learning (show it); and, retreival activities which will happen after the learning has been completed (know it).

The Impact of our Curriculum

In addition to the children making accelerated progress from their starting points, our pupils will believe that ‘only my best is good enough for me’. As a result of our implementation strategies our learners will be:

Communicators because they express themselves with confidence.
Independent because they successfully self-manage their learning.
Resourceful because they find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties.
Inquisitive because they demonstrate a genuine curiosity and interest in things.
Creative because they imaginatively use prior learning to produce something new and of value.
Perseverant because they show spirit and pride in successfully completing tasks.
Resilient because they are able to face disappointment, learn from failure, cope with loss, and adapt to change.

Additionally, the children will have a deep understanding of their local heritage and a desire to engage and invest their energy in Burnley’s future. Through the experiences we provide, our children will leave Barden with clear aspirations and be equipped with the skills and knowledge to make them valuable members of society.

How our curriculum is structured...

The Learning Challenge Curriculum

History, Geography, Art and Design & Technology are all taught through a subject specific, knowledge-rich curriculum approach. Each half term each class/year group will immerse themselves fully in an exciting topic which uses History or Geography as the 'driver' subject and Art or DT as the 'enhancer.'

This image shows exactly how a Learning Challenge topic is structured over a 6-8 week half term...

The diagrams below clearly outline the 5 stages of learning outlined in our curriculum intent, ensuring that children are able to embed new knowledge in their long term memory.