Curriculum

The schools within Evolve all offer a unique experience to families and children that choose them. Whilst we celebrate and share in our common features and work closely as a trust wide team, our overarching intent is that each school is able to implement a high quality, well planned out curriculum that suits their community and unique setting. Supporting these unique curriculum experiences is a framework of intent for all Evolve schools.

Evolve centralised curriculum intentions

The curriculum must be a broad one that ensures experiences of all subject areas

The curriculum should inspire children through a range of diverse learning opportunities

In our rural communities, the outdoors is spectacular and these areas should be used to enhance the curriculum

Values should underpin attitudes towards learning in the curriculum

There should be opportunity for the exploration of deep thinking with ‘big questions’

All space, inside and out, at school and at home, should be seen as offering the potential for learning.

There should be opportunity to share and celebrate learning and to present achievements in an array of different ways to an audience.

The curriculum should be at least as ambitious for children as the NC.

There should be clear indicators to show what is expected of children at different stages of their time in school

All children learn from their starting points through content that build upon these points with clear end outcomes.

For each individual curriculum area, subject leads should be able to articulate what they and the school hope that children will gain from experiences and learning in their subject.

The curriculum should be seen as an evolving, living entity that is reviewed and enhanced on a regular basis.

Pedagogical Intent

There are many ways to inspire children to achieve their very best in their learning. Pedagogy and well-designed curriculum content combine to fulfil this goal. What happens in the classroom is at the heart of what we value most highly across our schools. We follow a teaching and learning approach that seeks to regularly review practice, share best elements of teaching and call upon the latest evidence to bring about better outcomes for our children. Below is a description of our trust vision for teaching.

Teachers plan purposeful, exciting and innovative opportunities for children to learn and support them in building upon their learning to create a depth of knowledge across the curriculum.

Knowledge and long term memory that is created in children is built upon along a series of milestones through their primary school lives.

Expectations for all children are ambitious. Opportunities to return to and reflect upon previous learning are encouraged and provided.

Lots of opportunities for the application of knowledge and skills learnt are planned in across the curriculum.

The fundamental skills (spelling, punctuation, grammar, number facts) are well practised and embedded through regular re-visiting across the curriculum.

Teachers model learning for children and support risk taking in the pursuit of success and achievement.

Language is highly valued and the great benefits of reading and the communicated word are acknowledged in daily teaching.

What is our Curriculum?

The ‘curriculum’, defined by Dylan William (2013), is ‘the lived, daily experience of young people in and out of the classroom’. A curriculum should offer planned and intended learning experience, across a broad range of educational areas, that combine to develop young people through the acquisition of knowledge, development of skills and opportunity to apply these skills in a wide range of contexts. In addition to the range of subject areas that are covered, a curriculum should also be about personal development and the learning of key, core values and principles that young people will need to thrive in their lives.

The curriculum that we offer and provide within evolve is defined as:

‘An articulation of the knowledge, skills and values that we intend pupils to learn during their time with us’

All documentation relating to the curriculum must, therefore, tell of the ways in which we plan to deliver against the above definition for the benefit of the children. No curriculum can be comprised of separate elements of this statement but is an amalgamation of these facets working in conjunction with each other. Knowledge, skills and values all complement each other to fulfil the end aim of ‘learning’.

We are delighted to be working in partnership with The Warriner MAT. Our relationship spans the last couple of years and stemmed from the two trusts sharing a locality. During this time, we have discovered that a shared ethos and sets of educational beliefs exist between the two groups of schools.

In preparation for academic year 23-24, The Warriner MAT offered to share their primary curriculum for us to use as a progression from the curriculum that we used until the end of 22-23. The curriculum is grounded in a desire to offer the very best learning opportunities for all children.

We are excited to continue our partnership with The Warriner MAT through this year and beyond and to support with curriculum related developments into the future.

Download Curriculum Map

The Warriner MAT curriculum exists as a result of thorough and wide reaching research at national and more localised levels. In the formation of the curriculum , this evidence and research base has been utilised to provide solid foundations and rationale into why we plan to do what we plan to do. Amongst this evidence base is a wealth of research into meta-cognition and what learning is. How do we define something as having been learnt? How do the relevant areas of the brain turn information and experiences into learning and long term development? Two areas that need to be understood, defined in their own right and in the way they work in a complimentary way with each other are knowledge and skills.