Curriculum Intent
Since the Summer of 2022, the school has made significant changes to the planning and delivery of the curriculum on offer to our pupils. We feel excited about these changes and can see the positive impact they are having on pupils' ability to know more, remember more and do more.
Our Vision for our School
Gleadless is a caring school where we love learning and always aim high.
We develop respectful, safe and inclusive relationships with each other and our community.
Our school prepares children for success, enabling them to make aspirational choices for themselves and positive contributions to the wider world.
Our Vision for the Curriculum
- At Gleadless, children develop excellent understanding and secure knowledge of the world around them through strong teaching of our well-sequenced curriculum.
- Reading is prioritised in our curriculum, offering children a door onto experiences beyond their own
- Children have a range of learning experiences and enrichment opportunities which spark curiosity and promote a love of learning.
- Children learn that they have a voice and how to use that voice. They leave Gleadless as confident and considerate communicators.
- At Gleadless, children participate in experiences which foster a strong sense of identity and pride in that identity as well as curiosity and confidence about participating in the wider world
Developing Knowledgeable Learners
Our ambitious Gleadless curriculum uses the National Curriculum as its starting point. It has been carefully sequenced so that all children learn essential knowledge and skills in each subject area, preparing them well for the next step in their education journey. Retrieval practice is a key component to ensuring pupils know more and remember more over time. Our long term and medium term planning takes into account pupils’ prior learning and experiences. It identifies the key concepts, knowledge and skills which, through excellent teaching, are embedded in pupils’ long-term memories.
Our Values shape our Curriculum
We are respectful - We have a voice - We care - We have self-belief - We are determined - We are a team
At Gleadless, we are immensely proud of our community, its history and its ongoing contributions to the wider world. In line with our school’s vision, our curriculum gives Gleadless pupils a strong sense of identity and the opportunities that they can aspire to in the future. Our school’s core values sit at the heart of our learning intentions and curriculum, as well as our day to day interactions with pupils. Within each subject, from Foundation stage to Year 6, we seek to develop our pupils’ characters as well as their academic understanding. In lessons, children are encouraged to use their voice to articulate their learning in order to discuss and secure their knowledge.
Providing a broad and balanced curriculum for all children
At Gleadless, our curriculum is ambitious and devised to give all learners, particularly the most disadvantaged and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, the knowledge they need to succeed. Our curriculum is accessible to all learners and is designed to meet the needs of all pupils. All children participate in lessons with peers and enjoy the same rich and broad experiences. Quality first teaching includes using visual and practical prompts, making use of alternative ways of recording, scaffolding and chunking learning and making sure that the environment is accessible to all. A small number of children have personalised timetables and are accessing a bespoke level of support. These children still access all curriculum learning in line with their peers.
Our EYFS curriculum
The EYFS curriculum at Gleadless has been designed to enable all pupils to develop knowledge through a wide and varied range of experiences that demonstrate effective progression from FS1 through to FS2. This equips our children with the necessary skills and knowledge they will need for Year 1. The curriculum has been designed with a flexibility that can reflect, and respond to, the needs and passions of our current cohort and school communities.
Curriculum Implementation
At Gleadless, we use the National Curriculum 2014 and the EYFS Development Matters Framework as the basis for all of our curriculum planning.
Senior leaders, subject leaders and class teachers work collaboratively to create long term, medium term and short term planning for each subject which fulfils the requirements of the National Curriculum, whilst ensuring that it is engaging, relevant and meaningful for the children at our school.
English
Our English curriculum offer is bespoke to the school.
Exposure to a range of high-quality texts is at the heart of our Gleadless English curriculum. We have developed an ambitious text progression for our Reading and Writing curricula that have been carefully curated to include the following elements:
- Different types of fiction (drawing on Doug Lemov’s 5 Plagues of Reading - archaic texts, nonlinear time sequence, narrative complexity, symbolism, resistance)
- Diversity of structure (novels, picture books, short stories) and voice (first person, third person omniscient, third person limited, formal, informal)
- Within fiction, variation theme, genre, characters, settings, and plot
- Traditional Tales
- Poetry
- Non-fiction
- Cultural capital - diverse representation, past/ present, genre
Reading
At Gleadless, we follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme, which provides the foundations of learning to make the development into fluent reading and writing easier. The programme of study begins in the Foundation Stage 1 (FS1) with teaching children to listen carefully. Children will take part in nursery rhyme activities, phonological awareness and oral blending games. In Foundation Stage 2 (FS2) the children go one to learn a simple alphabetic code followed by a more complex code. Across FS and Key Stage 1, lessons are delivered daily with additional sessions for children who are not making the expected progress. In FS, there is further learning through continuous provision. This ensures that children learn to read fluently and at speed so they can focus on developing their skills in comprehension, vocabulary and spelling. As children move off the phonics scheme at the end of KS1, teachers plan and deliver reading lessons based on a range of high-quality texts, including fiction (classic and modern, picture books and novels), poetry, and non-fiction.
Writing
At Gleadless, we give children a writing curriculum that is bespoke to their needs. Fluency in transcription and grammar are prioritised as means to this end. They are explicitly taught in every year group. In Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, they are taught discretely so as to build skills whilst reducing cognitive load. As the children move towards the end of KS1, and into KS2, there will be a greater emphasis on composition and coherence, bringing the different facets of the subject together.
Maths
In Foundation Stage 1 and 2, children are exposed to elements of maths every day through teacher-led sessions and the continuous provision.
Maths is explicitly taught daily from Year 1 - Year 6. Maths is taught within the mastery approach following the National Curriculum. Teachers use White Rose Maths and NCETM to support their planning and teaching. In addition to daily maths lessons, KS1 children take part in a daily NCETM Mastering Number sessions, focusing on addition and subtraction facts within 20. Children in KS2 take part in a Number Sense session, focusing on multiplication and division facts.
Wider Curriculum
Our wider curriculum offer is ambitious and has developed significantly over the last number of years.
In some areas of the wider curriculum, such as History and Geography, our curriculum is bespoke and is planned to meet the needs of our pupils and of our school community.
In other subjects, leaders have decided to use particular programmes to support the planning and delivery of the curriculum, which, through internal consultation, have been developed to suit the needs of our own children.
Please see individual subject pages for more information about these.
Curriculum Impact
How do we monitor impact?
Senior and subject leaders in school monitor the implementation and impact of the wider curriculum through regular monitoring and evaluation activities. These activities include:
- Lesson visits
- Conversations with teachers
- Conversations with pupils
- Looking at pupils' work
- Internal subject reviews
- 'Deep dive' activities with Learn Sheffield and SSELP
- Analysing outcomes data
Leaders check whether pupils know more, remember more and can do more in particular subject areas. They check that teaching and learning in each subject supports pupils to achieve their age-related end points.
What do we do with this information?
The outcomes of monitoring evaluation are used in the following ways:
- To celebrate the strengths and improvements across the school with staff
- To improve the quality of teaching and learning in each class by acting on any areas for development
- To decide upon the development priorities for the subject, which will inform subject leaders' milestones
- To feed back to governors and parents about teaching and learning