R-A-I-S-E

Retention – Application – Inspiration – Success for Everyone

Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it.
                                                                                               Proverbs 22:6

How is our RAISE curriculum designed?

Our carefully designed and progressive curriculum provides opportunities for accelerated progress. The curriculum is sequenced to build on prior knowledge. Links are deliberately made to previously taught topics and other subject areas.

Learning is blocked across the curriculum and subjects are taught discretely to aid teaching sequence, retention of knowledge and progression.
 

Key skills such as evaluation, reflection, exploration and investigation are developed across our curriculum and evident within learning.

How do we implement our RAISE curriculum?

Our SMARTER lesson approach promotes critical thinking and problem solving. Each session will always have a focused ‘big question’ to promote discussion and reflection.

RAISE knowledge pages provide support in learning, specifying key knowledge and vocabulary that we want all children to be fluent with. The knowledge pages make it clear to teachers, pupils and parents what is expected to be learned by the end of the unit and shared through our RAISE website.

Reading is an imperative skill in supporting children to remember more and know more. Across our curriculum, exciting and factual texts have been purchased to aid teaching and learning. Each week, a whole class reading session is dedicated to the non-core curriculum.

Strategies to support long term memory development are in place e.g. mind mapping and recall games.

Teachers are highly skilled and trained in subject knowledge.

Enrichment opportunities are purposeful and not only enhance SMSC but also give children opportunities to build on prior learning, embed current learning and apply knowledge in different ways. We aim for every child to gain life experiences that will inspire them and provoke intellectual curiosity. Class trips and external visitors are planned and booked before the start of the year, evident in our Pupils Enrichment Opportunities document for each year group and the PSHE and Safeguarding Map.

All topics will start with a bang – something special and exciting to hook children into the wonder of learning. A wide range of artefacts and have been purchased to support learning.

Key attitudes are encouraged throughout learning. All learning is built around the 5Ps: pace, productivity, presentation, perseverance and progress.

Where possible, homework is linked to learning in our RAISE curriculum and engages parents and children in our curriculum. 

Children have individual books for History, Geography, RE, French, Science and Art. Children have a work folder for Design and Technology and use our online platform (Seesaw) to record their computing work.

How do we assess our RAISE curriculum?

Talk tasks are a staple part of our curriculum diet and offer children the opportunities to learn and develop the skill of talking confidently and presenting in front of an audience. Oracy and communication skills are crucial in preparing our children to have a successful future. Talk Task checklists allow teachers to assess and provide clear feedback on areas of development against spoken language objectives.

Carefully planned entry and exit tasks formatively assess learning and enable children to show what they know. Exit tasks are carefully planned to provide opportunities to demonstrate retention of knowledge. This may be completed as a piece of writing linked to previously taught writing genres, an essay or a double page spread.

Exit quizzes allow children to monitor and assess their own learning, celebrating the progress they have made during the topic.

Planning Structure

Our RAISE curriculum is progressively planned and sequenced to ensure that children build on prior learning, knowledge and vocabulary.

        1. 'Progression of Study’ and ‘Programme of Study’

The ‘Progression of Study’ document outlines national curriculum expectations that we follow as a school. From this, the ‘Programme of Study’ details specific objectives that teachers will use to support their planning and assessment in discrete subjects. The objectives show progression across the year groups whilst making reference to a characteristic for effective learning.

2. Yearly Whole School Curriculum Overview

Topics and themes are clearly mapped out across discrete subjects for years 1-6. Subjects across the school are blocked to aid retention of knowledge and memory recall e.g. all children across the school learning geography at the same time. This aids subject progression, subject leader monitoring, staff CPD opportunities, cross year group moderation and the sharing of ideas/resources.

        3. Medium Term Planning

Learning objectives are clearly sequenced, taken from the progression of study where appropriate. Teachers and children are aware of the learning sequence for the topic, key vocabulary, prior curriculum links, key texts and the exit task that they are working towards. For some subjects, a topic narrative provides additional information of what will be taught in each topic and may include concepts, curriculum links or names of key people to study.

        4. Year Group RAISE Knowledge Pages

Our online RAISE website is a collection of the knowledge pages, including a key knowledge, vocabulary and quiz page for each topic. This is a first point of reference for the children and details key, specific facts and vocabulary that the children will learn by the end of the topic. Children are able to access previous topics from prior year groups to support their retention of knowledge in preparation for in class low stakes quizzing. The children have home access which supports them with homework and revision.

• Knowledge Page – facts that the children will learn and be fluent with by the end of the topic. Key dates and names are also included on this page. We encourage the children to make reference to these facts in their end of topic exit and talk tasks.
• Vocabulary Page – a detailed list of key vocabulary that are relevant and useful to the teaching and delivery of the topic. The children must be able to define and apply the vocabulary to both written and spoken tasks with fluency and ease.
• Knowledge Quiz – a short exit quiz of ten questions that have been taught throughout the topic. The children complete this at the end of the unit. The quiz informs teachers of misconceptions or any gaps in the children’s recall of knowledge and supports future teaching.

       5. SMARTER lesson slides

Our SMARTER lesson approach enables us to deliver our curriculum with knowledge and vocabulary at the centre. We hope to see the children flourish and be inspired by their learning. The SMARTER lesson slides match the sequence of objectives and are used to deliver the lesson. Each lesson starts with a short retention quiz. Links to previously taught topics will be referenced to in order to promote retention of knowledge.