At Tyntesfield, our school mission statement and our four school values underpin everything that we do, we seek to live the values each and every day; they are at the heart of our school.

Tyntesfield's 'Irresistible' Curriculum - Framework

Our curriculum Journey …

Since September 2019 we have been on a significant journey, researching, discussing and developing a curriculum framework that is right for our school. Over the past few years, we have been working on our English and Maths Frameworks using research and development methodologies to underpin our approaches before then considering the wider curriculum.

This has been an exciting, challenging journey where we have questioned all that we do. Most significantly we have started with the ‘why’ and dedicated significant time to unpick and understand the purpose and aims of our curriculum.

Subject leaders have researched and presented their vision for their subjects and then worked closely with SLT to bring their vision to life whilst developing a curriculum that is cohesive, integrating a cross-curricular approach alongside ensuring individual subject integrity.

We have:

• QUESTIONED ‘why we teach’ and ‘why we do what we do’ and ‘what are the outcomes that we want for every child in our school’. 
• LEARNT FROM current educational research and the best practice in all curriculum areas, engaged in significant reading and taken time to visit other schools.
• INVOLVEDSenior leaders, subject leaders, teachers and teaching assistants,  all have been involved in the journey that at times has taken us ‘into the pit’ only for us to climb out and then fall back in many times. However, it is only as a result of this journey that we have a reached a clarity and understanding about what we want our curriculum to be about and what we want to achieve.

However, it is only as a result of this journey that we have a reached a clarity and understanding about what we want our curriculum to be about and what we want to achieve.

The many challenges and questions asked have resulted in us developing a deep understanding of curriculum purpose and design. We have clarity over the why, what and how of our new curriculum and all teaching staff have ownership of the process and the outcome.

Curriculum design founded in current educational research

Our curriculum journey has heavily involved learning from best practice and current educational research, this has shaped our thinking and resulted in us having a deep understanding of curriculum design and purpose.

In particular we have been strongly influenced by the following...

The Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence (Mary Myatt)

From ‘Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence’ we have deepened our understanding of curriculum design and used our learning to heavily influence of curriculum structure (Conceptual Structure) and design (individual subjects flow as a ‘narrative’ rather than as individual standalone topics).

“…we should THINK OF THE CURRICULUM AS CONTINUOUS. Not just a sequence or a chronology, it’s much more like a narrative.”

“Cognitive science suggests that pupils ought to learn the CONCEPTS that come up again and again – the unifying ideas of each discipline.”

“Long term memory …. Is the foundation for incorporating and making sense of new knowledge. MATERIAL SITS IN THE LONG-TERM MEMORY WHEN IT HAS BEEN ‘CHUNKED’, OR SORTED, INTO MEANINGFUL SCHEMATA OR CONCEPTS.  It helps us make sense of new material when the links are either spotted or made explicit.”

“If we pay attention to DEVELOPING A CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE, then new information from different contexts will become ‘stuck’ to the concept and children are able to make better sense of it”

“If the purpose of curriculum design is to ensure that pupils have access to and master deep subject knowledge, then one of the most efficient ways of doing this is to EXPOSE THEM TO TECHNICAL VOCABULARY AND SUBJECT-SPECIFIC TERMINOLOGY of a subject area.”

Mary Myatt - Curriculum Leadership

“Here are some practical things that subject leaders might consider...”

Providing time for every subject leader to CREATE A CURRICULUM VISION for the subject: what is the knowledge, understanding and disposition we expect to be evident as our pupils learn this subject.

1. Ensuring there is a CURRICULUM OVERVIEW FOR EACH SUBJECT across each year group that is UNDERPINNED BY THE PRECISE KNOWLEDGE TO BE LEARNT.
2. Providing time for subject leaders TO ENGAGE IN THE PROFESSIONAL SUBJECT COMMUNITY, either through local networks or through professional communities online.
3. Ensuring staff meetings … focus on what is going to be taught.
4. Thinking carefully about monitoring progress: covering the curriculum is progress. There is no need to have complex tracking systems.

 ‘Closing the Vocabulary Gap’ (Alex Quigley)

From ‘Closing the Vocabulary Gap’ we have deepened our understanding of the impact of vocabulary and reading on achievement and incorporated many of the ‘practical strategies for closing the vocabulary gap’.

Practical strategies for closing the vocabulary gap:

• Reading with purpose and pleasure: e.g. make it easy and attractive, living library, reading role models, book challenges, word walls, read alouds …
• Academic talk: model the code (ie. teacher modelling technical language), talk like an expert (high expectations that children will use technical vocabulary), signposting synonyms, thinking time, asking children ‘why?’
• Word play: word level activities, etymology

“…the future success of all our students rests predominantly on their ABILITY TO BECOME PROFICIENT AND FLUENT READERS. Their CAPACITY TO LEARN, AND ENJOY LEARNING, IS BOUND INEXORABLY TO THEIR READING SKILL.”

“When our EXPLANATIONS OF DIFFICULT ACADEMIC CONCEPTS AND IDEAS ARE CLOTHED WITH THE STORIES OF OUR RICH LINGUISTIC HISTORY, we offer our students a deeper understanding of the complex academic language of school.”

Educational Endowment Fund (EEF) Research

a) EEF Guide to Pupil Premium

This EEF research helped clarify and confirm our own thinking about best practice to address social disadvantage.

Relationships | Curriculum Design | IQFT | Intervention at the ideal point of learning

“… CLARITY is the Pupil Premium’s greatest strength. Educational attainment is the best predictor that we have of a young person’s long-term outcomes. The Premium can act as a focal point as schools plan and put in place the strategies that will help their students succeed.”

“GOOD TEACHING IS THE MOST IMPORTANT LEVER schools have to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.”

b) EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit

The EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit has been a ‘dip in’ resource that we have used as reference during our journey to ensure  that strategies that we are choosing to invest time and money are purposeful and proven to have a positive effect.

Examples include:

• Collaborative Learning
• e.g. Kagan structures, peer feedback, Lego pairs, lots of curriculum talk
• Effective Feedback of learning and at the point of learning
• Mastery learning

(in particular, EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium, Teaching and Learning Toolkit)

What is the PURPOSE of our curriculum? (the reason for doing something)

Following significant staff discussion about the purpose or WHY? of our curriculum, we agreed that the overarching purpose of our curriculum is to:

“Enable our children to secure deep, memorable knowledge and understanding; develop transferrable learning, personal and social skills and challenge thinking; generate aspirations from inspiring, experiences; nurture kindness and respect in others and in the world; build self-confidence and resilience and foster a love of learning.”

As a staff we are passionate about our curriculum and have spent time researching, discussing and developing a curriculum framework and model that meets the needs of our school, excites and inspires staff and children alike and achieves and enables our curriculum purpose.

• Our curriculum is cohesive – ensuring breadth, depth and a continuum of learning
• Our curriculum is understood and planned as a WHOLE and not just as discrete subjects.
• Each subject is well planned ensuring clear progression
  

What are our Curriculum AIMS? (desired outcomes)

Our curriculum has been designed to:

• be exciting and engaging and accessible for all.
• encourage children to develop a love of learning.
• develop metacognitive (learning how to learn) and thinking skills.
• be relevant, local, purposeful and develops social conscience where we care and appreciate for each other
• be vocabulary rich.

Through an effective staff development programme we enable our teaching staff to have the skill, knowledge, confidence and enthusiasm to teach the curriculum.

As a result our curriculum is designed to enable every child to:

• achieve their best in all areas of the curriculum.
• retain knowledge and make connections in their learning to deepen understanding.
• thrive on challenge and actively seek to make the most of every opportunity and further their knowledge and deepen their understanding.
• be engaged, confident and excited to learn.

Tyntesfield Curriculum Framework

CURRICULUM STRUCTURE

(INTELLECTUAL ARCHITECTURE)

Intellectual is the ability to think, know and understand things   
Architecture is the art of planning, designing, and constructing buildings

BROAD

Ours is a broad curriculum including a wide range subjects.

BALANCED

Ours is a balanced curriculum ensuring that all subjects have an appropriate weighting and the curriculum is not narrowed.

BREADTH

We ensure breadth of learning across the full span of knowledge of a subject.

DEPTH

We ensure depth of learning as specific topics are focused upon, amplified and explored.

We ensure a broad and balanced curriculum providing children with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to develop into well-rounded, informed individuals

The greatest challenge for us in incorporating deeper learning is to balance the amount of content children cover with the depth to which children explore what they are learning. It's not practical for children to go to deeper levels on all the content they learn.

The key for us has been to determine which concepts are the keystones that unify or connect the subject area. If children can go deep in those areas, they can gain insight into disciplinary thinking, the way experts in that subject go about applying their content knowledge.

COHERENCE

(Coherence comes from the latin ‘to stick together’)
Our curriculum framework has been deliberately arranged in an order underpinned by clear rationale and conceptual rigour

CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE
(Abstract Ideas)

The purpose of our NEW TYNTESFIELD CURRICULUM is that pupils should know things in depth, this is hard to do if they are presented with lots of information without an organising structure. By developing a conceptual structure, new information from different contexts become ‘stuck’ to the concept and children are able to make better sense of it.

Children NEED to see the BIGGER PICTURE to make CONNECTIONS and LINKS to DEEPEN their understanding

TEACHING FOR MASTERY APPROACH

Securing deep knowledge and understanding; sustained and incremental process of owning and applying material over time.

Can our pupils do something, think deeply and articulate their reasoning as a result of what they’ve been taught?

- Fluency (securing knowledge)

- Reasoning (explain and justify) (giving the inner thinking a voice)

- Problem Solving (transfer of existing knowledge)

CURRICULUM PLANNING FOCUS

(INTELLECTUAL ARCHITECTURE)

Intellectual is the ability to think, know and understand things   
Architecture is the art of planning, designing, and constructing buildings

K
KNOW

(topical, factual, knowledge)

C
CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING

(deep, transferable, understanding)

S
SKILLS

(specific skills and processes)

CURRICULUM TOOLS

VOCABULARY and ETYMOLOGY

ORACY

READING

FEEDBACK

INNOVATIVE TIMETABLING

DEEP LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES - NO SHALLOW WORKSHEETS

MOVE FROM TASK COMPLETION TO DEEP LEARNING

CHALLENGE so there are NO easy answers

ASKING QUESTIONS and LISTENING TO ANSWERS

ASSESSMENT to inform teaching

SELF and PEER
assessment

MODELING

TRANSFERRING INFORMATION FROM WORKING MEMORY TO LONG TERM MEMORY

STIMULUS

MATHS and ENGLISH
embedded across the curriculum

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Use of the indoors and outdoors to further enhance and enable effective teaching and learning

GROWTH MINDSET ETHOS

Challenge opportunities and feedback at the point of learning

FIRST HAND LEARNING EXPERIENCES

OPPORTUNITIES FOR PUPILS TO TAKE PRIDE AND OWNERSHIP ON THE PRESENTATION OF THEIR WORK based on its purpose and audience

REAL AUDIENCES

(Clear purpose for learning/presentation opportunities)

INCLUSIVE QFT

Learning is accessible for all