Children become experts across a range of subjects, and these form the basis of the wider curriculum. Expert lenses help children to be Scientists, Designers, Historians, Geographers, Musicians, Artists, Computer-s, during sessions each week.  They also learn about Religion, PSHE, PE and MFL (Spanish) in Key Stage 2. There is a focused approach to knowledge development and skills within this, and a strong focus on vocabulary acquisition and development. The wider curriculum is developed in this way, whilst providing enrichment opportunities for English and Maths as appropriate.

Essentials Curriculum

During 2024/2025, we are developing our curriculum design and delivery for History, Geography, Art and Design and Technology. 

We are using Chris Quigley's Essentials Curriculum to support our curriculum design in these subjects. The Essentials Curriculum is designed to ensure that learning enters children's long-term memory. We use 'Threshold Concepts', which are the 'big ideas' that shape children's thinking within each subject. The same threshold concepts will be explored in each phase and children will gradually increase their understanding of them. An example of a threshold concept in History is 'Evidence tells us about the past.' Because the threshold concepts are repeated in each phase, it is important that children progress in their understanding of them. The Essentials Curriculum sets out this progression in the form of three 'Milestones'. Each milestone contains a range of descriptors which give more detail to be discovered within the concept. Over a two year period, children will become more and more familiar with these details by exploring them in a breadth of contexts. 

The breadth of the Essentials Curriculum is designed with two goals in mind: 

1.) To provide a rich cultural capital;

2.) To provide a coherent, structured, academic curriculum that leads to sustained mastery for all and a greater depth understanding for those who are capable. 

-Cultural capital is the background knowledge of the world children need to infer meaning from what they read. It includes vocabulary, which, in turn, helps children to express themselves in a sophisticated, mature way. 

The Essentials Curriculum design is based on evidence from cognitive science;three main principles underpin it:

1.) Learning is most effective with spaced repeptiton.

2.) Interleaving helps children to discriminate between topics and aids long-term retention. 

3.) Retrival of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength. 

The impact of the Essentials Curriculum is that by the end of each Milestone, the vast majority of children have sustained mastery of the content, that is, they remember it all and are fluent in it; Some children have a greater depth understanding. We track carefully to ensure pupils are on track to reach the expectations of the curriculum. 

(Chris Quigley Education 2019)