Curriculum

Curriculum Intent

At Biggin Hill Primary, we are committed to providing a curriculum which is broad and balanced and provides our children with opportunities to gain essential knowledge, skills and understanding, which will enable them to flourish and reach their full potential: academically, physically, and creatively. We have developed a bespoke curriculum which encompasses the requirements of the National Curriculum, while exposing our students to memorable and enriching learning experiences. We believe that every child is entitled to an ambitious curriculum and our curriculum is accessible and sufficiently challenging for all.

The key principles behind the design of our curriculum are to encourage our children to:

• Be ambitious and take pride in all they do.
• Be independent and inquisitive learners; displaying a thirst for knowledge.
• Embrace challenges by demonstrating endeavour and resilience.
• Appreciate the diversity of the world; valuing difference and demonstrating respect for each other and those around them.
• Have aspirations for the future and know that these can be reached through hard work and determination.
• Be confident and responsible citizens who contribute to and demonstrate an appreciation of the world they live in.
• Be articulate; demonstrating the ability to question, challenge and debate.

Implementation

At BHPS, we share a vision for delivering an immersive and engaging curriculum for all of our pupils. Through careful planning, our curriculum enables our pupils to acquire a deep understanding around the topics they are studying. As they progress through each year group knowledge is consolidated and built upon to support retention and to ensure our pupils have a strong understanding of the topics they study. Teachers use concept maps at the beginning of each unit of work to make valuable links to our pupils' prior knowledge, consequently creating a strong base for new knowledge. Skills are carefully and progressively mapped across each key stage and subject area. These skills are built on and developed as our pupils progress through each year group, thus ensuring they are equipped with the key skills needed for the next stage in their education. The progression of skills is tracked using the progression of skills documents in Science, History, Geography, R.E, Design and Technology and Art. This document ensures that children are given opportunities to continually develop their skill-set. At the end of each unit, children are given opportunities to demonstrate their acquired knowledge and understanding through end-of-unit assessment quizzes and ‘Time to Shine’. We ensure our lessons are accessible to all, through our ‘access to learning documents’. These documents identify any potential barriers our pupils may encounter in their learning and suggest effective and meaningful provisions, which can be put in place to allow our pupils to have control, gain independence and achieve. This allows teachers to plan carefully to meet the needs of all of our pupils so that they develop confidence and independence and access the learning in curriculum lessons.

Through our curriculum, we strive to give our children the best possible opportunities for their future endeavours. At BHPS, we see this as the accumulation of knowledge, attitudes and language and we play a vital role in the development of these areas through immersing our pupils in enriching experiences such as visiting museums, exploring historical sites and introducing them to art and music. Experiential learning is prioritised within our curriculum, in order to raise the aspirations of our pupils and instil in them a belief that they can achieve anything if they are prepared to work hard. Teachers carefully plan educational visits and trips to deepen understanding around the topics our pupils learn about. Our teachers plan innovative buzz days in each topic - ‘Buzz Days’ provide a hook for their new learning. As well as this, our outdoor learning environment is used to enhance hands-on-learning experiences for our pupils. By embedding cultural capital in our wider curriculum, it ensures that all of our pupils from different socio-economic backgrounds are exposed to the same opportunities to achieve in their future.