The curriculum is built on the foundations of success. We believe all children should be aspirational, knowledgeable and should achieve their goals. This is the model our curriculum builds from:
Each subject discipline has been planned to ensure that knowledge and skills are sequenced form Early Years to Year 6. At Bricknell, we strive to go beyond the National Curriculum and as a result our highly skilled subject leaders have bridged the gap into Key Stage 3 within their curriculum planning. Knowledge is empowering and provides a foundation for success. We accept that the more children know, the more they can learn. The subject overviews provide specific, progressive objectives that allow teachers to be precise in planning. Specific elements of each curriculum area are repeated to ensure that knowledge becomes embedded. Retrieval practice forms part of regular teaching to allow pupils to secure long term knowledge.
At Bricknell, we celebrate our pupils as individuals and uncover their interests and strengths to enable them to have a solid foundation to further themselves. We recognise that all children are different and whilst celebrating these differences, we invest in enabling all pupils to have the same opportunities to reach their full potential.
Through collaboration with subject leaders and subject specialists across our secondary schools, each subject has identified key concepts (big ideas) for their subject. These key concepts are the skills and knowledge essential to pupils achieving and exceeding expected standards in that specific subject. Key concepts are subject specific and build progressively as pupils move through the school. When pupils encounter a key concept, they will revisit other topics where they learnt about the same concept to enable them to make connections between different learning and build the schema they need.
In addition to first order concepts, subject leaders have identified subject specific second order concepts. Second order concepts are fundamental knowledge and skills which are transferable across a range of curriculum subjects. For example, we introduce pupils to the concept of ‘similarity and difference’ early in their education, developing the observational skills and language needed to make comparisons. This is developed and applied as pupils move through the school so they can confidently apply this in all areas of the curriculum by upper Key Stage Two.
Any child working below their age-related expectation, will receive a tailored curriculum with personalised objectives taken from the Curriculum Assessment Toolkit. This will enable all children to build the skills and knowledge needed to bridge the gap between themselves and their peers enabling them to reach their full potential.
Our aim is to provide inclusive and aspirational environments and learning experiences where pupils thrive and build the cultural capital they need to make aspirational choices about their own futures, overcoming any barriers. In order to achieve this, our curriculum is underpinned by the principles highlighted in our Aspiration Curriculum.