"As a parent, I have been very impressed with Heatherlands and feel the management and staff have not only high expectations of the children but also of themselves, pushing for better outcomes and always exploring better ways to achieve them, while also remembering that school can also be enjoyable and fun! My children feel happy, safe and often excited to go to school and this can only have a positive effect on all aspects of their learning! 

My eldest child is a keen reader and her well developed reading ability was recognised by the school, before we realised it at home, enabling us to support her to make the most of her abilities. The staff are busy, but always willing to help and polite."

Heatherlands Curriculum Intent

At Heatherlands we are committed to ensuring we deliver high quality education. We teach the National Curriculum in a creative and cross curricular way offering authentic learning experiences both inside and outside the classroom, utilising the whole school environment and our forest school. Our curriculum is broad and balanced and builds upon the knowledge, understanding and skills of all children, whatever their starting point, as they progress through each key stage. Our curriculum incorporates the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum 2014 and other experiences and opportunities which best meet the learning and developmental needs of the children in our school. The intent of our curriculum is for pupils to have high aspirations, strive to be the best they can be and to make a positive contribution to the school community and beyond.

We have reviewed the implementation of our curriculum to ensure there is a much greater emphasis on the ‘powerful knowledge’ that children need to not only truly understand concepts, but also to enable them to apply this knowledge, offer informed explanations, make links and spot patterns. Crucially, it will also provide them with the essential foundations for the next part of their educational journey and beyond.

See the 'Big Ideas'. 

Heatherlands Curriculum Implementation

Whilst we continue to use the National Curriculum as our framework, we will not limit our curriculum content to the knowledge, skills and concepts covered within it. Our curriculum intention is to ensure every pupil understands there is no limit to their potential, therefore we are raising our expectations by increasing the depth and breadth of children’s understanding. We are reviewing each subject and identifying the essential knowledge that we feel is the children’s entitlement – and then deciding how best to teach it and how best to assess the impact of it. We aim to expose the children to content, which is deeper and more sophisticated than we have taught before.

To help meet this challenge, we are producing ‘Knowledge Organisers’ which are ‘go-to’ documents outlining the essential knowledge that teachers will be covering across a unit of work; including dates, key vocabulary, definitions and other contextual or technical information. These ‘Knowledge Organisers’ will be shared with pupils, parents and carers – with the aim that everyone knows exactly what is being taught, and what the children need to learn.

Our curriculum was designed collaboratively in year groups, key stages and with the whole school. Time was given to discussion on the delivery of the objectives in a creative, theme led way. Each theme we have chosen has a core subject focus, where objectives are taught and assessed to aid reporting at the end of the year. The other curriculum areas link to the focus and are taught in a cross curricular way where it is possible. These themes are reviewed annually to meet the needs of the cohorts of children and to link learning to current events. To enable children to meet their potential we ensure the curriculum develops engagement in the foundation subjects with the capacity to further extend their learning. We give children the opportunity to deepen their understanding through questioning and challenge tasks and link to our school values wherever possible. 

Measuring Impact

Measurable Educational Value

Our curriculum is based on the statutory EYFS frameworks and the National Curriculum for KS1 & 2 (2014). These frameworks set out the breadth and depth of study and the skills and attributes for learning that our children need to acquire and experience. The emphasis on the new curriculum is that all pupils should secure their knowledge and understanding of the year group they are in. This means that pupils are expected to use and apply their knowledge and skills in a range of independent learning opportunities. Our curriculum development aims are to ensure that our children have opportunities throughout their time at Heatherlands to develop, use and apply their knowledge, skills and understanding. We ask that our teachers encourage our children to make connections across traditional boundaries, maintain an open mind while exploring a range of options, and reflect critically on ideas and outcomes, therefore improving their ability to work collaboratively to solve problems and ensure the best possible outcomes for all.

Measuring impact across the curriculum

To enable us to demonstrate what the children have learned and what they have remembered, we ensure we plan impact tasks regularly in the form of 'flashbacks' or retrieval tasks as well as activities involving quizzes or assessment booklets.

These tasks are designed to show us what the children have learned and what they remember.

Tasks are also designed to give the children opportunities to demonstrate their learning metacognitvely using a range of AFL assessment tasks and activities. These enable us to identify whether all children know more and remember more. Eg. photos and bubble ups, 'Retrieval Rangers', 'Show what you know', smiley face or traffic light systems, role play, questioning/quizzing, presenting their learning in communication week or super quizzes.

• Assessing substantive knowledge - produce a vocabulary wordbank. Provide words from the topic and then ask the children to write down what they know about them. These act as retrieval cues, rather than simply asking children to write down everything they know about a topic with no prompts. If they can’t think of anything, they simply leave it blank so you are aware of what needs to be revisited. 
• Assessing disciplinary knowledge – answering questions linked to the discipline itself. Focus on unpicking the elements of the subject discipline we want children to retain (e.g. what is DT, why is this an important subject, what is the role of a designer, when would we use the skills and knowledge from DT in everyday life?)

Through live marking during the lesson, teachers will identify any misconceptions and highlight these to the class to ensure everyone is clear and understands. There will always be a review of prior learning and the next step in their learning will be shared to prepare them for the next lesson or unit to enable them to make links forwards and backwards.

Testing at Heatherlands

An additional way we check how much the children have learned and to assess what they remember, is through testing. We test in the core subjects of reading, maths and SPAG to show us what the children can remember and what we need to teach next. Reading tests takes place termly, maths tests are delivered at the end of each unit and end of year tests for SPAG and spelling, reading and maths are completed in the summer term. Results are shared with parents at parents evening. 

Metacognition at Heatherlands

We want the children to know more and remember more.

We have been sending home knowledge organisers, detailing the key knowledge, vocabulary and skills for each topic since 2018. Therefore, the next step for us was to spend time devising a new home learning strategy with staff and parents to enable the children to 'learn how they learn'. We want to enable the children to find strategies and learn useful tips to enable them to retain information and to enable them to overcome difficulties. Therefore, through the home learning strategy we have devised a term by term metacognition task/retrieval task using a variety of tools and techniques. 

The metacognition/retrieval strategies we focus on teaching are:

Mind mapping and presenting

Bullet pointing, quizzing and fact finding

Colour coding and self questioning

Each term, the children will be set tasks and the teachers will model, using a specific metacognition/retrieval strategy how to record information and how to reflect and add to this information - showing the impact of their learning and seeing what they have remembered.

Alongside this, we have a half termly quiz. This quiz is designed to see what the children can remember. They run in conjunction with the topics each half term and are spaced out, to ensure the quiz actually shows retention of learning. Some quizzes will check on the current learning and others may well check on the previous terms learning.