Our Intention
‘At Middle Barton School we believe that inspired teaching and leadership is the bedrock to help, motivate and develop children to reach their full potential. Through our care, respect for each other and sense of belonging, we aim to encourage excellence, valuing uniqueness in all children in our community. We provide a broad and exciting curriculum to promote achievement and our team are committed to developing the whole child in becoming a happy, balanced and responsible citizen.’
Be Curious – Believe – Challenge – Achieve
Middle Barton School Curriculum Intent
How we arrived at this Intent
This has been a carefully considered process involving all members of our school community. Curriculum vision evenings; staff discussions about ‘Who are Middle Barton children?’; talks with our feeder secondary school and governor meetings led us to design our curriculum intent.
What type of curriculum do we want OUR children to receive?
All pupils at Middle Barton will benefit from a wide curriculum that is underpinned by our school values: RESPECT, COMPASSION and INTEGRITY. Through our Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural curriculum, we aim to prepare all children as best we can for the world in which they live, will contribute to, and in which they will succeed and thrive – embodied in the British Values.
Through a purposely inclusive curriculum, covering academic, technical and vocational elements, all children, whether with special needs or disadvantaged, will be prepared for the next step in their education.
What is our curriculum?
Our curriculum has been carefully sequenced with breadth and ambition built in, resulting in a knowledge-rich, subject-based programme which emphasises ‘PRIOR LEARNING, REVISITING and NEW LEARNING’ within every lesson. By mastering the key concepts, our children will build a depth of understanding and develop a fluency through and across all subjects, enabling them to acquire and apply skills and therefore not ‘rush through the curriculum’.
Reading is at the heart of our intent at Middle Barton; we understand our moral obligation is to ensure that all children can access and understand the range of subjects on offer both within primary but also secondary education. Through a carefully planned and delivered curriculum, the children will have opportunities to develop and explore their deep love of reading. Quality texts are chosen with clear intentions and are offered throughout the school both in classrooms and in all communal areas.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RGju4bCHuBJPpM-XZz0IRLz0eyGG1QhMaUELEN7orWU/edit
We recognise the importance of the STEM subjects in our society and their potential to influence our ever-changing world. We have therefore designed our curriculum to teach our children to question, challenge and find solutions through a schema that builds knowledge and skills and promotes a belief in the power to change through STEM. Our commitment to this and the children’s cultural capital is evidenced in full time ‘outdoor learning’ and STEM leads who plan and deliver high quality lessons for all our children.
What is our offer to the children by the time they leave Middle Barton School?
Children will have a strong moral conscience and understanding about their commitment to our modern British society and know how to be a responsible citizen. They will have respect and compassion for all, irrespective of culture, religion, gender, deprivation, ethnicity or differing mental and physical needs. Children will be prepared for the secondary stage of their education by ensuring they are at the correct levels in reading so that they can access the wider curriculum.
EYFS
Children in our Reception follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum (EYFS). The EYFS Curriculum has seven main areas of learning
– Personal, Social and Emotional Development – Communication and Language – Physical development – Literacy (Reading and Writing) – Mathematics – Understanding the world – Expressive Arts and Design
We are ambitious for our children and encourage learning at every opportunity. A practical, playful approach to learning, based on the needs and interests of all our children, is delivered through topic-based planning and the
developmental needs of our children. We teach children individually, in small groups, and as a whole class. Through a combination of teacher input and continuous provision opportunities, learning is planned to encourage children to develop their learning independently through exploration and challenge.
The “Characteristics of Effective Learning” are at the heart of the Early Years Curriculum and explore the different ways in which children learn. They highlight the importance of playing and learning, active learning and thinking critically. All the learning experiences we plan for the children allow them to utilise and develop these skills. Our learning environments, both inside and outside, are stimulating and exciting, and relevant to the needs and age/stage of our children. Resources are easily accessible, developing children’s ability to access the curriculum independently. This enables us to meet the unique needs of our richly diverse pupils.
PSHCE
Through using our SCARF (Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience and Friendship) scheme, we provide a whole-school approach to building these essential foundations which we believe are crucial for children to achieve their best, academically and socially. In addition to weekly lessons, SCARF underpins our entire curriculum and recognises the role of the community and home life in influencing children’s choices.
Maths
We follow a mastery approach to teaching Maths at Middle Barton. This is based around the five key ideas of representation and structure, mathematical thinking, coherence, variation and fluency. Every lesson is carefully sequenced through a series of small steps, allowing for progression from the children’s prior learning, so that new concepts can be fully mastered. Children are exposed to a wide range of high-quality reasoning and problem-solving opportunities and encouraged to discuss their ideas and challenge each other’s mathematical thinking. Mathematical topics are covered in blocks to enable a really ‘deep’ understanding and ensure that they have mastered the necessary foundations before advancing on to more challenging concepts. Key arithmetic skills are taught daily in order for children to become fluent in the basic number facts they need to know to succeed in maths and make key connections between their areas of learning.
Science
The world is going to need problem-solvers, critical thinkers, designers, technologists and scientists to be able to implement change, adaptation and sustainability for our world. We at Middle Barton recognise the importance of these future jobs and vocations and want to help equip our children for this future.
Working with our secondary feeder school, we have carefully developed a curriculum with a progressional knowledge structure so that our pupils have a skill set that enables them to understand the importance of the sciences and the role that they could play in developing sustainable resources, alternative energies, and forefront innovations. Our science curriculum has been carefully designed to strike a balance between children securing the knowledge and understanding they need of key scientific concepts, whilst also enabling them to develop their ‘working scientifically skills’ through a range of scientific enquiry types and cross-curricular learning opportunities.
Design and Technology
Our design and technology curriculum is focused on the five key areas of: textiles, structures, mechanisms, electrical systems and food. Each unit gives children the opportunity to explore and evaluate a range of successful products and innovations and be inspired by engineers, designers, chefs and architects before designing, making and evaluating their own project which has a real-life purpose. Our design and technology curriculum provides clear links to the other STEM subjects and allows our children to develop their creativity, communication and problem solving skills- which we recognise will be extremely important in preparing them for the future.
Computing
The curriculum is based on the latest pedagogical research. It also provides an innovative progression framework where computing content (concepts, knowledge, skills, and objectives) have been organised into interconnected networks.
The programming units, where concepts and skills rely on prior knowledge and experiences are taught in order.
History
Key knowledge will be taught, revisited and monitored throughout using a clearly mapped chronology from Year 1 to Year 6. Children will be able to apply knowledge from previous periods in history and look for patterns and similarities. They will be able to place different time periods sequentially and develop a conceptual understanding of how our world has evolved over time.
Geography
Children will understand their place within the world today by exploring and investigating how societies change and adapt over time including any human influences on the environment. Children will have knowledge about their immediate environment in Year 1 and then progress further across the world as they move through to Year 6. They will be able to name the seas, continents and key landmarks and they will contrast and compare using prior facts from previous years. Children will identify the human and physical features that build up our world and recognise similarities and differences between countries.
Art
We intend to provide a creative climate in which children experience and learn from a broad range of artists and crafters, local, national and international as well as across history and differing genres. We want children to express their creativity through a critically chosen media whilst acquiring the knowledge and skills to produce quality arts and crafts. Children will understand the importance of Art in shaping people’s opinions and use the vocabulary to reflect on their work and enable them to make more informed choices in their futures.
Music
We intend to provide for the progressive development of skills in movement, voice, and aural imagery, and to show an awareness and appreciation of organised sound patterns. Children will respond to music with sensitivity, analysis and be able to critique. They will be able to express ideas, thoughts and feelings through music through a curriculum covering awareness and understanding of traditions and styles from a variety of cultures, times and places.
Sport
At Middle Barton School, we aim to motivate, inspire and develop a passion for physical activity and games. We deliver high quality, engaging and inclusive lessons that allow all children to build upon prior knowledge and skills from EYFS through to Year 6. Children will acquire a range of transferable skills through innovative lessons that develop the whole child.Our PE lessons branch into 6 focus areas throughout the academic year to ensure that we are helping every child to achieve and progress whilst finding their niche and interests in physical activity. These areas are: creativity, social skills, health and fitness, cognitive development, personal best, self confidence and physical skills. Alongside this, children are taught about relative sporting games and will develop an awareness for the vast range of games available for them to be a part of both internally and externally. All our children will have opportunities to compete in intra school and inter school games that will ensure to build character and help to embed values such as respect, cooperation and fairness. As role models for the children, we will help them to develop a positive mindset about sports and begin to recognise the impact on well being and mental health as they grow up.
MFL
We firmly believe that learning a foreign language will foster children’s curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world and can provide a valuable insight to the cultures and societies where French is a predominant language. Language is at the heart of all learning. It is how information is received and communicated from the earliest stages of our development. Therefore, learning a language helps develop the understanding of the many purposes for which language is used. It provides many practical scenarios for verbal and written communication. French is taught by fluent adults from Years 1 – 6.
RE
Through using the Pan-Berkshire Agreed Syllabus 2012-17, we cover the requirements of the Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Syllabi.
Children are taught to Engage, Enquire, Evaluate and Reflect via a ‘Big Question’ which has been created to allow children to experience AT1 and AT2 in every unit. Christianity is the main religion taught, in accordance with the national guidelines however, Judaism will be taught in KS1 and Hinduism and Sikhism covered in KS2.
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