Curriculum

Curriculum

At The Olive School, Small Heath, our curriculum drivers are:

• Educational excellence
• Character development
• Service to communities
• Underpinned by STAR values of Service, Teamwork, Ambition and Respect
• Overarching leadership specialism

In line with the Star Quality Standards, the curriculum actively promotes equality for all through both its content and delivery. Full details are contained in the Annual Equalities Statement.

We aim to ensure that all pupils have access to the curriculum and are not disadvantaged by any disabilities or special educational needs. Full details are contained in the SEND Information Report, Policy and Guidance.

INTENT – What do we want our children to learn?

At The Olive School, Small Heath, we want our children to excel academically across all National Curriculum subjects, to become curious learners and responsible members of the local, national and global community.  We want to provide a solid foundation for our children, so that they become confident, articulate and knowledgeable leaders of the future.  Key features of our curriculum:

·         We are proud to be a multicultural school and we want our children to recognise, accept and celebrate different cultures, backgrounds and beliefs, preparing them for life in modern Britain.

·         Nurture a strong spiritual connection with God.

·         We provide a curriculum that encourages our children to become responsible, well-rounded, socially aware and confident citizens. We promote both good physical and good mental health, emphasising the need for our children to become self-motivated, self-directed and resilient learners.

·         Leadership development is central to our curriculum and is designed to nurture character and citizenship, so that our children can confidently contribute to society. Our leadership programme ensures that we develop well-rounded, ethical and accomplished role models and leaders of tomorrow.  Our Star values of service, teamwork, ambition and respect are at the heart of our provision.

·         The curriculum is designed to foster thought, curiosity and a desire for learning in all our children, regardless of their starting points. By providing a relevant and personalised curriculum that reflects the Small Heath and the wider Birmingham area, all children, including disadvantaged children and those with special needs, will succeed within our intellectually challenging environment.

·         Reading is fundamental to all learning. We want all our children to be excited about reading.  We build reading skills from the early years upwards, securing phonic knowledge rapidly and then developing essential comprehension skills. At the Olive School, Small Heath we follow the Read Write Inc programme in line with the phonics curriculum for EYFS and Year 1. Year 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 follow the Project X Reading Scheme by Oxford Reading Tree and the Star Reader Programme in line with the reading curriculum.

·         We develop a love for reading. Our texts are ambitious and motivating, supported by our Star Readers initiative.

·         We are highly ambitious for our children and emphasise academic success. We carefully design our curriculum to be broad, balanced and knowledge-rich, so that our children know more and remember more.  We plan for progression in knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare children for future success in education and careers.

·         Our learning is coherent, with knowledge building on knowledge. We identify what we want our children to learn (composite knowledge and skills) and break this down into building blocks (component parts), with robust assessment ensuring that children know more and remember more.

·         Our children learn through a traditional, discrete subject model and acquire subject-specific knowledge, with literacy underpinning everything we teach. We believe that this is the best way to prepare children for future learning.

·         We emphasise strong connections across subjects because we want our curriculum to be real and meaningful. Problem solving and application in the real world, including working with the local community to create enriching learning experiences, play a key part in our curriculum offer.

IMPLEMENTATION

Our curriculum is driven by a team of strong subject leaders, supported by the leadership team, to ensure that learning is sequenced and tailored to meet the needs of our children.  Key features of our curriculum implementation:

·         All subjects are taught discretely. Our planning for learning carefully maps out the progression of skills, knowledge and understanding, following subject progression maps that fully cover the National Curriculum and beyond.  Our subject leaders then support our teachers to personalise and adapt the curriculum, ensuring that it is relevant to our children.

·         We provide cutting edge, professional development for our educators. Our ‘Teach like A Star’ programme ensures that all of our teachers have common teaching approaches so that they deliver successful lessons.  These approaches include:

·         the pre-teaching of key concepts and vocabulary

·         regular reviews and the revisiting of prior learning

·         strong teacher modelling

·         carefully sequenced lessons that use ‘chunked learning’, allowing new learning to be retained

·         continual checking of understanding that informs planning

·         precise feedback for our children

At The Olive School, Small Heath, our children know more and remember more.

·         We have developed subject progression maps (see subject pages), so that curriculum coverage and progression is fully understood by all teaching staff. Road maps and knowledge organisers ensure that our children understand their learning journey and have access to the most important knowledge and subject-specific vocabulary.

·         Community links with London theatres and museums, faith centres, heritage sites, charities, businesses and other sites of local interest allow children to have broad and varied learning opportunities, through trips and visits. For example, trips to the Birmingham Thinktank, residential visit to Kingswood, charitable links with Birmingham Children’s Hospital, supportive links with care homes, and ‘faith trails’ to local mosques, temples and churches.  Our year group curriculum long term plans carefully map out these enrichment opportunities.

·         We place great emphasis on learning beyond the classroom, and our children have regular opportunities to take part in enriching learning experiences, such as: our assembly programme,, Bikeability, national writing, poetry and art competitions and leadership sessions delivered by the community police.

·         Learning is a partnership between school and parents. This is strengthened through events such as: regular Principal and Parent Meetings; meet and greets; home visits; special transition days; parent-teacher meetings; plays and performances (e.g. Year 6 production); parents workshops (e.g. phonics, SATs preparation, online safety, reading); digital communication (e.g. weekly bulletins, Class Charts behaviour management App; digital surveys); online learning platforms (e.g. Learning by Question, Purple Mash, Bedrock, Times Table Rockstars; Reading Eggs); and parent readers.

·         Curriculum implementation remains unaffected when children are unable to access the school site. Our outstanding remote learning offer, via the Teams platform, offers a seamless transition to live remote learning.  No learning time is lost.

Our extra-curricular offer centres on the five leadership foundations of sport, creativity, performing arts, enterprise and social action. This includes school council, School prefects, play buddies, reading champions, working with the local soup kitchen, and an array of clubs for sports, homework, gardening, cookery, music, environmental awareness and reading.

To find out more about our curriculum, email info@olivesmallheath.staracademies.org