Intent
At Thackley we believe that our broad and balanced curriculum provides children with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to develop into well-rounded, informed individuals. We have a clear plan of what children should know by the end of each unit and organise engaging tasks to help them learn and remember this knowledge. We ensure that we deliver the full National Curriculum as well as personalising the content to meet the needs of our learners. We want our children to build on existing learning in order to help them know more and remember more.
We share this information with parents through our knowledge organisers and the information in our knowledge showcases on the website.
Our school aims: Skills for Life; High Standards in Everything We Do and Happy Memories are woven through our curriculum.
Implementation
Teachers plan the knowledge requirement for each subject in meticulous detail under the whole school guidance of the subject leader. We make sure that the children know the skill that they are learning and how this skill supports other skills within the curriculum. Our knowledge for each unit is sent home in knowledge organisers and this forms part of our home learning for the term. Children are quizzed on these knowledge organisers at the start of each session in our ‘low stakes’ quizzes. We know that children will struggle to retrieve some of the facts that they have previously learnt. Once this testing has been done the children are given time to go back over this learning to find the facts they have forgotten. Relearning these facts allows them to be placed back into their long term memory through their working memory; this should help them to be retrieved the next time they are needed. Regular revision of these facts and testing of the knowledge organisers is key to the children being able to retrieve the information. It is important that the children know and understand this key information and can apply their knowledge rather than just have a recall of disconnected facts.
Impact
Our children enjoy their curriculum. They have a thirst for knowledge and ask for quizzes on what they have learnt. We are keen to share our learning with others and build on our previous knowledge.