Our Curriculum Vision
To provide our children with a broad, balanced and rich curriculum offer which is ambitious and prepares lifelong learners who are ready for the next stage of their education and life in modern Britain.
At Normanton Junior Academy, we know our children and are ambitious for each and every one of them. As a result, we have carefully designed, implemented and reviewed our curriculum so that every child can achieve their very best. There is purpose and intensity to learning. This is not an ‘off-the-shelf’ offer.
It is our driving ambition that our curriculum represents and meets the needs of our school community and the children of Normanton Junior Academy. Our intention is that all pupils, irrespective of their background or the challenges they face, make good progress and achieve their potential across all subject areas. We want all pupils to want to come to school, be their best and be confident, independent, successful learners.
Educating the Whole Child
“Equipping the future citizens of Normanton with the knowledge and skills to lead a successful life”
We also want to:
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Ensure our children are happy, safe and healthy so they can thrive academically. To help us achieve this, mental wellbeing underpins all our work.
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Challenge stereotypes and celebrate equality, inclusion and diversity outside of Normanton.
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Foster and celebrate a sense of community at school, local and international level, creating a curriculum rich in relevance.
Our Curriculum Aims
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Provide our children with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life so they can experience the world outside Normanton. British Values are interwoven with the curriculum so they are not a ‘bolt on’ but are truly lived by our children.
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Our curriculum is carefully planned and sequenced towards clear end points so that our children have sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning.
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The subject discipline of each curriculum area means our children must know more and remember more, therefore they can do more at each stage of the learning sequence.
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Children are expected to recall regularly what they know, remember and can do at each stage of their learning journey with us.
Each subject is seen as a subject in its own right, which is planned carefully to ensure our children master the disciplinary knowledge and skills over time. We have developed a timetable that ensures our children are taught the depth and breadth of the full national curriculum and we use subject specialists in Computing, Music, PE and Modern Foreign Languages to enhance our provision. By valuing all subject areas, we are enabling our children to make maximum progress and have a high-quality learning experience.
We believe that reading empowers everyone to understand the world and their place within it, so we provide our children with a vast array of texts, throughout their time at Normanton Junior Academy. Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. Our reading curriculum forms the foundations of our English curriculum, feeding directly into children’s writing with clear audience and purpose. Children learn to read through encountering challenging whole-class texts, which also drive learning in History and Geography. Supporting texts, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry, are woven through the curriculum and allows the transferring of key knowledge of long-term memory which the children can apply fluently. This helps our children to know more, remember more and do more for subsequent learning.
Subjects such as History and Geography are taught through an overarching theme, ensuring depth and mastery of understanding. We ensure that our children are not merely covering content but achieving a depth to their learning and a progressive network of knowledge, over time, to provide high-quality outcomes.
Learning Powers
Resilience – Continuous Improvement – Curiosity – Concentration – Co-operation – Creativity
Great behaviour is essential to ensure all pupils can learn in a safe, calm environment so that all pupils can thrive and achieve.
At Normanton Junior Academy, we promote the explicit teaching of successful learning and social behaviours, to ensure our community of learners are well-rounded citizens who have a positive impact upon society.
School Values: Learning Powers and Learning Behaviours
At Normanton Junior Academy, all learning experiences are underpinned by six learning powers that constitute our values:
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We are resilient
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We continuously improve
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We are curious about the world
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We concentrate on our learning
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We co-operate with all members of our community
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We think creatively
As a result of these values being lived, our children enjoy learning, know how to behave and become model citizens of our community and leave our school, ready, for the next stage of life and education.
At Normanton Junior Academy, we have high expectations of the behaviour of our community.
In support of our school motto, Together we Learn, pupils are given opportunities to acquire Learning Powers and demonstrate their accompanying Learning Behaviours.
The Learning Powers support children to display a positive learning attitude, thus enjoying their lifelong learning. The Learning Behaviours stipulate the behaviours expected to be able to learn. These are the values that all members of the community are required to demonstrate in order to thrive.
At Normanton Junior Academy, the PSHE curriculum is embedded in our whole-school ethos and culture. We have carefully planned our children’s personal development journey and this is interwoven with the wider curriculum as well as specific lessons, workshops and assemblies. Key features of our Relationships and Health Education also support the teaching of our Learning Powers which develop the characteristics our children need so they are motivated, enthusiastic learners who behave with integrity and respect.
Furthermore, the promotion of SMSC (spiritual, moral, social and cultural), British Values, and mental and physical development supports the preparation for our children to live successful lives within our community. Our aim is to ensure that all our children engage with views, beliefs and opinions that are different from their own or the community in which we are located. We want to challenge any pre-conceived thoughts and educate the children with the correct knowledge and understanding for adult life. We are determined to prepare all our pupils the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences for Key Stage 3 and later life.
Implementation
The content of our curriculum is broken down into components and sequenced in a logical, progressive, systematic and explicit way so that all pupils acquire the intended knowledge and skills.
We are relentless in our determination to ensure all children receive a high-quality, inclusive curriculum. We are committed to developing a reflective, evidence-based approach to all areas of school improvement with strategic decisions being informed by educational research. By using sources such as the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM), our local English Hub, our local Maths Hub and regional research schools, research runs through school practice and our quality first teaching.
By developing a carefully planned schema, explicit teaching of subject specific content enables children to understand deeply and articulate their learning across subjects in a variety of ways.
Vocabulary is explicitly taught across the curriculum and our children explore rich vocabulary through high-quality texts that support all curriculum subjects. Leaders work hard to ensure our staff have expert knowledge of the subject they teach and are guided by effective subject leaders. This ensures all pupils, especially those considered to be disadvantaged, receive high quality teaching daily.
High quality teaching – every day for all pupils – can and will make a positive difference. Developing teacher practice and pedagogy over a sustained period continually drives meaningful change within our classrooms. For example, teachers use modelling and worked examples to demonstrate metacognitive approaches to learning and other strategies from the EEF’s ‘Five-a-day’ principle. This approach ensures equity of offer for all pupils at NJA.
Impact
We are continually reviewing our curriculum as we believe a school’s offer is never complete and adapts with the ever-evolving needs of our community. We are committed to providing a challenging curriculum that goes above and beyond the National Curriculum, which in itself is ambitious and wide-ranging.
Achievement at Normanton Junior Academy is constantly occurring for all children as they know more, remember more and can do more across a broad and balanced curriculum – we are relentless in our drive to create the best curriculum offer. Striving for excellence each day, rooted in high expectations, leads to our children being ready for the next stage of their education, both academically and personally.
Assessment in all its forms is used to check pupils understanding of what our curriculum intent says they should know by when. When misconceptions are identified, these inform future teaching and curriculum planning to ensure gaps are filled.
As a result, pupils leave at the end of Key Stage 2 with standards that are in line, or above, the national average and are fully prepared, in the broadest possible sense, to take advantage of the next stage in their education.
Our individual subject curriculum documents articulate the progression of disciplinary knowledge and skills – please visit individual subject pages under the ‘Curriculum’ tab.
To see examples of our curriculum in action, please visit the ‘Curriculum Enhancement’ pages under the ‘Curriculum tab’.