Clee Hill Community Academy

At Clee Hill Community Academy, we have developed an ambitious curriculum that designed to give all pupils the knowledge they need to succeed in life. Our exciting and engaging curriculum inspires children to develop a love of learning and activate their enquiring minds. Our broad curriculum is knowledge-rich and provides pupils with a foundation of knowledge and skills so they are ready for their next steps and can succeed. 

Our curriculum is diverse and inclusive and challenges pupils in term of their current thinking whilst offering experiences to develop their cultural capital. It is planned with the needs of our pupils at its core with the intent of closing the gap for disadvantaged pupils.

Our curriculum enables opportunities for all pupils to be reflective about their learning and view mistakes as part of the learning journey. We place emphasis on a knowledge-based curriculum that embeds our school values – respect, equality, courage, compassion, peace & self-belief.

Through our curriculum, we intend to:

• Support children with retention of subject knowledge and to develop long-term memory skills so that children know more, remember more and do more. We underpin our teaching and learning with an understanding of how children’s schemata grow; where children build and connect their knowledge because of the carefully planned out progression.  Our curriculum maps are evaluated to reflect research including Ofsted’s most recent subject reports and reviews.
• Raise standards through a knowledge rich, progressive and well-sequenced subject teaching that builds on prior learning.
• Ensure every child is able to read at an age-appropriate level and has an enjoyment of reading and language to carry them through their education and beyond
• Provide a range of learning experiences for our children, which broaden their understanding of the Local, British and Global Community and embrace their place in a multicultural, diverse world.
• Challenge, engage and motivate our learners to take responsibility for themselves and others.
• Promote pupil well-being so their spiritual, moral, social and cultural awareness enables them to make positive contributions to the community and society

The driving force behind the delivery of an inspiring curriculum is high quality teaching and learning which includes a wide range of learning experiences, through real life and meaningful tasks. As a village school in rural Shropshire, our curriculum takes advantage of the local environment whilst appreciating the limitations of rural deprivation. It aims to provide opportunities to enrich the experiences alongside ensuring that they become caring and considerate citizens too. 

Through the implementation of our curriculum we aim to:

• Deliver our sequenced and well-structured curriculum in carefully considered manageable chunks with clear, progressive core knowledge.
• Allow regular recap opportunities to ensure prior learning is embedded and knowledge is systematically built upon. Give pupils regular opportunities to recall knowledge and practice skills (to strengthen memory, fluency and automaticity).
• Use a variety of retrieval techniques to support pupils and check what has been learnt.  We know that learning is an alternation in the long-term memory and the importance of supporting this in a variety of ways. 
• Provide a breadth of knowledge with opportunities to make links in knowledge so that pupils know more and remember more.
• Use quality texts, which are selected to stimulate children’s interests, to give a context for the learning and to make meaningful cross-curricular links to ensure transferable knowledge.
• Teachers check pupils understanding systematically, identify misconceptions and provide clear feedback and support

Our school has a 2-year rolling programme in each of the phases which follows the national curriculum and adapts to changing needs.  Please see class curriculum maps for subject overviews per term or the subject progression documents for how knowledge is carefully planned and built upon from EYFS to Y6.

• 2024- 2025 – Cycle A
• 2025 – 2026 -– Cycle B

We check our curriculum is having impact through:

• Monitoring by teachers and subject leaders (informal and more formal: lesson monitoring; discussions with pupils; book looks; tracking against core knowledge). 
• Formative assessment: ongoing checking of children’s understanding to inform teaching.
• Summative Assessment (for example core subjects termly)
• Engaging in external consultancy. Our Trust invites educational experts to work with us and objectively consider the impact of our work.  Our Governors also conduct link visits to evaluate and review developments and impact. 

Curriculum Subject Pages

• Maths
• Reading
• Writing
• Science
• PE
• Computing
• Religious Education
• PSHE
• RSHE
• Music
• Art
• Geography
• History
• Design & Technology
• French

   

What are our key curriculum drivers and why have we chosen them? 

Our school has used local knowledge and reports to carefully consider what our children need to learn in relation to the context that they are growing up in.  The following key drivers ensure our specific pupil needs are met.  Each aspect focuses on the learning process of 'knowing more, remembering more'.

 
Globally Aware: Research tells us that there has never been a more important time for young people to understand what is going on in the world. With good knowledge about global issues, our pupils will realise the importance of taking good care of our planet. We want them to have the confidence to travel and explore as they grow older, which will open up new opportunities for their futures. 

Culturally aware: As our school and community is predominantly white British our children need to understand how Britain and other parts of the world are multi-cultural and why this should be celebrated. We aim to develop children’s understanding of national and international culture so that they are tolerant and respectful towards others. 

 Self-Aware:  Understanding more about themselves both physically and emotionally will allow our pupils to reflect and continuously improve. Increased levels of obesity nationally mean that our children need to be taught how to stay healthy and have daily opportunities to enjoy being active. We want our pupils to take responsibility for their actions, looking after themselves and others. Having an awareness of how pupils learn can support them with knowing more and remembering more. Taking ownership of their own learning means learners are motivated, engaged and self-directed. This means they can monitor their own progress, reflect on their learning and start to develop learning strategies which are effective to them. 

An ambitious curriculum: We want children to be completely ready for the next stage in their education and our ambitious curriculum challenges their way of thinking. Future aspirations develop their awareness of the possibilities for their future and have an idea of how to reach their goals. We aim to provide opportunities for the children to make real world connections in their learning and apply skills and strategies they learn in lessons.  The curriculum offer is implemented in a consistent manner by ensuring that excellence in teaching and enjoyment in learning go hand in hand and lay the foundations for success in later life.

A culture of learning:   Our curriculum uses opportunities to reinforce a positive of learning. We recognise everyone as a unique individual with their own ambitions, skills and dreams. As a growth mindset school, children are encouraged to embrace challenge, persist in the face of setback, and see effort as the path to mastery. Creating a positive culture of behaviour is a journey which needs to be an integral part of the learning process. We pride ourselves of measuring our progress through both our successes and failures. Across the curriculum, children are given regular opportunities to explore, question, investigate, evaluate, and reflect on their learning. These crucial experiences strengthen children’s subject knowledge and embed life-long skills for our children.

Knowledge based:   Our knowledge-centred curriculum is carefully and logically constructed and sequenced so that subject knowledge is built on pre-existing knowledge and becomes more complex over time.

Starting with a knowledge rich content, the curriculum is carefully organised in a coherent way, to ensure that learning is built upon. Our curriculum is based on the substantive knowledge which includes the components (the building blocks) to support learning.  Once these components have been acquired by the children, they are then able to use and apply them in a range of ways. Once substantive knowledge has been formed, our children are exposed to disciplinary knowledge, where they are able to apply their prior knowledge such as exploring how historians investigate the past through use of source work.