New Horizons Seaside Primary

Curriculum Intent: Attitudes for Life - DREAMS

At New Horizons Seaside Primary, our Knowledge Led Curriculum is designed to enable our children to develop the following key Attitudes for Life:

                                 Diligence:      I always work hard.

                                 Resilience:    I stay positive when things get tough.

                                 Enthusiasm:  I am interested in all I do.

                                 Aspiration:     I want to be the best I can be.

                                 Motivation:     I stay focused on my goals.

                                 Self-Belief:     I believe in myself.

Our curriculum enables our children to demonstrate these attitudes in lessons. Much more than that, we believe that these attitudes form the basis of our wider-school ethos; we develop children who are able to meet the challenges of all aspects of primary school life and who are equipped with the knowledge, skills and personal qualities they will need for the next steps of their academic journey.

Above and beyond this, our Exploring New Horizons curriculum offers unique learning opportunities, which enhance and enrich the learning that goes on in our classrooms and further develop the DREAMS ethos. Over their time at New Horizons Seaside Primary, our children will engage in 118 extra-curricular learning activities ranging from attending a flight simulation to learning to body board to escaping from a maze!

What is a Knowledge Led Curriculum?

Skills and understanding are seen as forms of knowledge and it is understood that there are no real generic skills that can be taught outside of specific knowledge domains.

Acquiring knowledge is seen as an end to itself; there is a belief that we are all empowered through knowing things and that this cannot be left to chance.

New Horizons believes that the creative, 'rounded and grounded’ children we all want to develop – with a host of strong character traits – will emerge through being immersed in a knowledge-led curriculum.

Knowledge Is Taught To Be Remembered, Not Merely Encountered. 

Our units of work are supported by ‘Can I’ objectives that detail the knowledge to be learned.

We do not merely want to ‘do the Romans’; we want children to gain some specified knowledge of the Romans as well as a broad overview. We want children to know specific facts about plants and about the Amazon Rainforest, WWII, Romeo and Juliet and climate change.

We want children to have more than a general sense of a topic through vaguely remembered knowledge encounters; in addition to a range of memorable, enriching experiences from which important inferred knowledge is gained, we want them to gather a body of specific facts and procedural knowledge – not ad hoc but clearly planned for.

The Power of Knowledge…

Our Curriculum Ethos:

• Our curriculum is designed to be remembered in detail - to be stored in our students’ long-term memories so that they can later build on it, forming ever wider and deeper understanding.
• Our approach runs through every key stage in school; units of work are not defined by headings but by details.
• Our Knowledge Led Curriculum (KLC) is sequenced and mapped deliberately and coherently.
• Our Knowledge Led Curriculum is packed with experiences and is driven by our values and intent about what matters; it has depth and moral purpose.

What is a Knowledge Led Curriculum in practice?

For example: The Ancient Greeks

Imagine Year 6s looking back to when they ‘did the Ancient Greeks’ in Year 4. What would we want them to remember?

They might recall dancing on their Topic Day, making Ancient Greek sandals in Design and Technology, a few facts about City-States and what Ancient Greek soldiers looked like. They might have a general sense that the Ancient Greek period was a long time ago. 

In a Knowledge-Led Curriculum they would remember all of this but would also be expected to know key facts about life for men, women and children in the Ancient Greek City-States of Athens and Sparta; facts about the Trojan War and the Battle of Marathon; that Ancient Greek plays were tragedies, comedies or satires; the terms trireme, hoplite, amphitheatre, democracy, monarchy, amphitheatre and names like Achilles, Helena, Odysseus and Zeus as well as dates placing the Ancient Greeks in time in relation to the other periods of history they have studied. They would also remember the historical enquiry skills they developed, looking at a variety of sources to ask and answer questions about how the Ancient Greeks lived. 

This would be part of a long-term plan ensuring students return to Ancient Greek history beyond Year 4 such that their knowledge would be built on, not left behind.

“No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.” L. Frank Baum

Reading at the Core of the Curriculum…

Books enable children to discover new worlds, meet new people and learn about the past, but they also have the power to transform lives.

By sparking growing imaginations, stimulating critical thinking and helping to develop empathy, reading gives children the very skills they need to succeed at school, at work and in life.

Helping children discover a love of reading is crucial – but research published in December 2018 showed that children’s enjoyment of reading is lagging behind their reading skills. At Seaside we strive to challenge this finding.

Reading for Pleasure…

Why does this matter? While it is undeniable that being able to read confidently is an essential life skill, the importance of reading just for pleasure should not be underestimated.

Study after study has shown how reading for pleasure is vital for academic success, mental health and even later economic success. The emphasis here is on reading for pleasure: simply being able to read does not confer the same benefits as actually enjoying it.

Getting the right book into the right child’s hands at the right time is the key. Yet one in eight disadvantaged children in the UK do not own a single book of their own.

What can we do… as a school we consistently promote the love of reading through book clubs, book fairs, mystery reader visits, reading assemblies, two extensive libraries, Accelerated Reader awards and assemblies, the Summer reading challenge and our KLC curriculum!

“The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

Dr. Seuss