Curriculum
At Over Hall Community School, Mrs Edgeley is our curriculum lead supported by Mr Ian Percival, Trustee.
If you require any further information regarding the curriculum, please do not hesitate in contacting the school via telephone on 01606 663650 or by email at admin@overhall.cheshire.sch.uk
Our Intent - our vision and ambition for learning
Our vision is to support our children on a learning journey – our ‘supported’ curriculum journey that …
Starts at our doorstep – learning and exploring our locality – with the aim to embolden a pride of their hometown; the confidence and courage to take the next steps on their journey; and realise that even from here we can ‘make a difference’.
Takes us down new roads – exploring and learning about our diverse country.
And…
Across waters – exploring and learning about our wider world, wider diversity and its wonders.
Along this journey we encourage our children to …
Appreciate we don’t know it all (not yet); appreciating others and what they can bring to our journey; appreciate that we may make mistakes but mistakes strengthen our learning.
Expect to find new things, new learning, challenges, barriers and further questions.
Approach new learning and not to shy away; develop resilience by being confident in our approach and learn from our mistakes.
Above all, learn and enjoy learning.
We encourage our children to …
Be Citizens with open minds – mindful of equality, appreciating and celebrating diversity, protected characteristics and a strong awareness of moral duty and British values
Create and realise futures – exploring and finding new possibilities; setting goals; playing a part in ensuring a sustainable future for all and future generations.
Challenge – challenge both themselves and others to think differently and learn new things; generate questions; solve dilemmas; climb the brick walls and jump the hurdles that may interrupt our journey; develop strategies to deal with change but also make changes to improve life.
Confidently approach conflict - find resolutions; appreciate different goals, different values and how emotions can consume rational thinking.
Celebrate – positive impact; achievement and successes.
We aim to ensure children feel supported, enjoy learning and feel prepared for life within and outside of school, today and for the future, through a variety of strategies, topics and activities in order to make a difference. We offer our children a knowledge-rich curriculum through a range of experiences that are designed to build strong foundations of knowledge, skills, resilience, confidence and self-esteem, preparing them for life beyond the school gates.
Learning - Skills such as thinking and learning are heavily dependent upon language acquisition thus phonics, vocabulary development and reading play an integral part of our curriculum intent. Our curriculum offers a range of subjects that have been progressively mapped out influenced by the statutory objectives within the National Curriculum. Prior knowledge, skills and vocabulary are recalled in retrieval exercises in order for our children to know, understand and remember more.
Develop as individuals - During their time at Over Hall, we aim for children to develop as a person, developing their knowledge, skills alongside increasing in resilience - through identifying their secure base, build upon their self-esteem and a strong sense of self efficacy.
Community - We are determined to both embolden and provide for our community at Over Hall, building upon the foundations of love and tolerance, preparing for life beyond the school gates. We work hard to create a ‘harmonious community’ in a supportive environment from where we can all experience the freedom and safety to grow, develop, dream, believe, achieve and inspire each other. We aspire to high standards in the quality of all that we undertake and are passionate about seeking better outcomes for children and their families, meeting their needs and stretching their aspirations.
Our curriculum…
- Is a broad offer of planned activities organised to prepare each child for life outside of our school gates; promoting a love of learning; supporting and nurturing growth as individuals as well as lifelong learners.
- Engages children through a range of high-quality texts and reading opportunities, artefacts, discussion, direct and real-life experiences that inspire.
- Promotes independence and creativity where children have a clear purpose for their learning.
- Provides breadth and balance - making learning exciting and memorable for all. A thematic approach is adopted where appropriate and whenever possible we provide exciting opportunities to support learning and personal development that include educational visits, visitors, learning outside the classroom, whole school projects and assemblies.
- Recognises the importance of challenge, supporting and ensuring learners are safe to make mistakes and explore new concepts.
As a result of consistent high expectations, all children experience a curriculum that enables progression, encourages and inspires for further learning. This in turn, ensures that our children are confident individuals who are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need in order to apply their education to become lifelong learners.
Our Implementation – our school’s realisation of our intent is through planning and practice, both adaptive and responsive to need including activities to know, understand and remember more.
Staff value the different ways in which children learn and plan lessons to account for these differences, this can include the use of themed days or events that further enhance their learning. We recognise that a range of experiences help children to learn. As a result, staff plan for experiences across the school grounds alongside educational visits and residentials across the locality and country. Such visits, residentials and experiences in our own environmental area are used as tools for teaching a wide range of curricular areas boosting attainment, progress alongside social, emotional and personal development.
Staff regularly encourage recall of prior learning and make cross-curricular links, so that children can draw upon prior or new knowledge from different subjects and understand how each topic plays a part in everyday life.
By using different techniques, we intend on keeping children engaged with learning and provide adaptation for those who learn differently to their peers in knowing and remembering more.
Staff plan learning of our curriculum in a thematic approach where appropriate, however, where links are not possible discrete teaching and learning takes place.
Every school has its own contextual journey through history. At Over Hall we take our children on a journey exploring diversity and knowledge of their locality, their country and their world – in such activities we aim to develop awareness, appreciation alongside pride of their hometown and country. This is essential as we live in an area with a high percentage of white British and low percentages of other recognised groups. As a result, our children develop a wider cultural capital.
Staff use the EYFS and National Curriculum to ensure that our children can access the whole curriculum effectively, allowing our children to flourish and achieve their full potential regardless of their starting points or any contextual barriers.
Vocabulary development, promoting a love of reading and writing skills are at the heart of our curriculum and are recognised as a key priority for a child’s development.
Accountability & leadership:
Trustees and Senior Leaders ensure that our curriculum is appropriate to our setting, vision and values. They strategically focus upon monitoring and challenging our intent, implementation and impact. They support the Headteacher in establishing a clear vision and set high expectations for our curriculum, our children and our staff. Trustees and Senior Leaders ensure that subject leaders are held to account, questioning their progress and subject development.
All subjects are effectively led by enthusiastic, knowledgeable members of staff. Subject leaders ensure the vision for the curriculum is translated into their subject specific intent, implementation and impact. Subject Leaders, alongside the Senior Leadership team, regularly monitor the effectiveness of their subject areas through book scrutinies, learning walks, data scrutiny and pupil and teacher voice. Feedback is then given to staff as a means to continually improve our curriculum.
Our teachers have the knowledge, expertise, skills and enthusiasm to successfully implement the curriculum within their year group. They have a clear understanding of the progression both within their year groups and across school. They are clear and regularly refer to what came before and will come after. Class Teachers encourage children and families to explore their learning on a wider scale engaging in home learning activities. Class Teachers ensure that support staff are fully prepared and resourced for their roles in the classroom.
Our support staff have a clear understanding of their role in supporting children’s learning journeys effectively interacting with staff and children. They support children of all abilities and ages; adding value to what teachers plan and deliver; helping to develop independent skills and encourage children to manage their own learning; and deliver high quality support and intervention.
Training: Training is available for all staff to develop best practice. Staff have access to expert support from specialist teachers to enrich their teaching through the use of fellow staff expertise, outdoor agencies/consultancies, and cluster groups. Where necessary additional support is given to individuals to ensure the quality of the curriculum remains high in all areas. Additional support for members of staff when they are new to a year group or a programme of support for early career teachers is essential to an effective team. We value continuous professional development, and we tailor this to identified need and strategic school development. We recognise that a positive environment promotes further learning, and this can be accessed by staff and trustees through a variety of platforms including National College and the NPQ programmes.
Equal Opportunities: At Over Hall we promote equal opportunities to all of our children in line with the Equality Act 2010 throughout all of our practices. All children access the broad and balanced curriculum. We aim to provide a mastery approach to the curriculum. Support or challenge is provided through scaffolding and where necessary, individual or small group support. Wherever possible, children access Quality First Teaching. Children receive feedback and immediate intervention to avoid misconceptions.
Right to withdrawal: Parents/carers have the right to withdraw their children from non-statutory components of sex education within RSE and from religious education and/or collective worship. Parents/carers do not have the right to withdraw their children from relationships education. High quality evidence-based and age-appropriate teaching helps to prepare our children for the opportunities, responsibilities, and experiences of life. Such experiences enhance their spiritual, moral, social, cultural, mental and physical development.
Planning & organisation: Planning provides a clear structure, often linked to high-quality texts and resources to ensure engaging and purposeful lessons. Progressive and adaptive teaching takes a revisit, teach, practise and apply approach. Knowledge and skills are built upon to ensure children’s learning is embedded in the long term, providing memorable experiences that the children can draw upon to further develop in the future.
Adapted teaching sessions may be provided for children identified as needing additional support which can be either individually focused or group based. Staff also carry out interventions for small groups with Teachers or Teaching Assistants. Within these interventions, Teachers and Teaching Assistants break down the content of the lesson in a more digestible way. The sessions can last between 20 minutes to one hour (depending upon the age and ability of the child) and groups are generally no larger than six children to every adult. This allows them to access dedicated time with the adult, ensuring any questions that they may have get answered in a way they understand. It is important to note that these interventions supplement the work of the teacher and do not replace it.
Breadth and depth: Children’s personal wellbeing and development is at the heart of progress and plays a significant part of life at Over Hall, with timetabled opportunities to explore and support the emotional wellbeing. A high-quality, broad and balanced curriculum teaches children to be articulate, literate, numerate, computerate, creative and also physically, socially and emotionally capable. Staff adhere to the formal requirements of the national curriculum; enriched further by an extensive range of outdoor learning experiences and extra-curricular activities. As a result of the wide range of opportunities open to our children, they develop culturally, morally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.
Metacognition and self-regulation: principles of metacognition and self-regulation help to drive our curriculum’s intent and implementation. Content is based upon how children learn alongside what they should learn. Staff strive to maximise opportunities for our children to learn, understand and know more – retaining this key knowledge over a long term. Our curriculum ignites what they already have experience of, making links between subject matter taught and the children’s own prior experiences, prior learning or memories. “Thinking about thinking" is a key component of learning and it involves encouraging our children to think explicitly about their own learning. At Over Hall we encourage staff and children to ‘talk more about less’ and focus upon key learning; ‘think out loud’; and ‘make questions key’. Scroll through this page to find a link to further information that underpins metacognition and self-regulation.
Assessment: Teacher Assessment is the primary form of assessment at Over Hall. During lessons, teachers check that the children have learnt the necessary knowledge and have the skills required to complete the key learning tasks – this is demonstrated through discussion, hot marking and via short quizzes at the start or end of lessons. Teachers also use this assessment in a timely manner to identify common misconceptions and feedback which informs planning and adjustments to their teaching.
However, testing is also used (where appropriate) to support teacher judgements and guide planning. Rising Stars, National Test-Style Standardised Assessments, are used for mid-year progress tests in reading and maths, which are in all line with the National Curriculum. Statutory testing is completed in Years Reception, 1, 4 and 6. Termly Pupil Progress meetings take place for all year groups with the headteacher to discuss progress being made and next steps to facilitate further progress. Assessment information is shared with parents and children regularly through the year at Parent Consultation and annual reports. All subjects are monitored closely by Subject Leaders.
All staff are involved with cross school moderation to ensure accuracy of judgements, particularly in the core subjects. Key year groups also are involved with cross town moderation as part of the strong Winsford Education Partnership, known as WEP. Staff also engage with Local Authority support, training and moderation.
Our Impact – our evidence of the positive impact of the intended curriculum
During their time at Over Hall, children increase their resilience through identifying their secure base, improved self-esteem and a strong sense of self efficacy. As a result, they will be able to confidently complete the phrases...
I have ... (identifying their support and resources around them enabling them to feel safe and secure)
I am ... (identifying personal strengths, attitudes and beliefs)
I can ... (identifying social and interpersonal skills; a sense of control and mastery; an understanding of strategies and limitations)
Through the teaching and learning of a memorable broad and balanced curriculum children have an increasingly positive view of their education and future aspirations; they are able to enthusiastically discuss, explain and draw upon their previous learning using richer and more varied vocabulary. They become increasingly inquisitive, posing and solving problems and applying their learning in a variety of contexts.
As a result, our children will be ready and have greater resilience for their next stage of education and life beyond our school gates. Regardless of their starting points we expect all of our children to make progress and alongside this progress they will be more aware of their moral duty as citizens, demonstrating tolerance and an appreciation of diversity and when faced with adversity draw upon their resilience and awareness of how their efforts, no matter how small, can help to make a difference to their own lives but also to the world they live in.
Celebration of achievements
We celebrate our learning and experiences in a variety of ways, using our in school Class Dojo account alongside our Facebook and sometimes Twitter accounts capturing many events and learning activities; our newsletter keeps everyone up to date with what is happening and each year group has a page on the school website where you can find out more about the classes, their learning and learning links.
Our assemblies celebrate successes both in and out of school. We invite parents to come and join us at coffee mornings, family lunches, stay and play, assemblies and termly consultations, where children often share their learning.
