Implementing the Curriculum

The Strive4 curriculum sets out the body of knowledge and skills that our pupils will gain at each stage of their time at their school.

Our curriculum has been adopted in order to support pupils to build their knowledge and to apply that knowledge as skills.  Using the National Curriculum to underpin our curriculum, subjects are planned and sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before and towards clearly defined end points.

For most subjects, the Trust has adopted, and then adapted, external schemes of work. For others, the Trust has developed its own sequential and progressive curriculum to ensure that the curriculum reflects the Trust and each school’s local context.

Our curriculum is implemented through a whole-school strategic approach to the spiritual, cultural and moral development of pupils in order to equip them for life and to make the world a better place.

How we teach our curriculum:

Our curriculum is taught through:

•  well taught and appropriately sequenced content

• thoughtfully designed assessment practice
•  

•  consideration of an appropriate model of progression

Our curriculum is:

• knowledge-rich

• cumulative; it allows pupils to make conscious connections in its content, across subjects, through vocabulary choices. Our staff make these connections explicit.

• vocabulary-rich

Our provision is informed by educational research into effective teaching practices, cognition and how knowledge and understanding develops. 

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.

Piaget's stages are:

• Sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years
• Preoperational stage: ages 2 to 7
• Concrete operational stage: ages 7 to 11
• Formal operational stage: ages 12 and up

Piaget believed that children take an active role in the learning process, acting much like scientists as they perform experiments, make observations, and learn about the world. As children interact with the world around them, they continually add new knowledge, build upon existing knowledge, and adapt previously held ideas to accommodate new information.

The curriculum at Strive4 has been developed to take into consideration Piaget's stages so that pupils develop the following cognitive skills:

•  Evaluating
•  Analysing
•  Applying
• Creative Thinking
•  Problem Solving
•  Making Connections
•  Processing
•  Reasoning
• Critical Thinking