Garden Suburb Junior School Curriculum Intent Statement

At Garden Suburb Junior School, we aim to deliver a broad, ambitious, dynamic and child-centred curriculum for our diverse community. We believe that every child must have the opportunity to succeed and we ensure our curriculum is designed and resourced to overcome any learning barriers. We provide our aspirational demographic with the mind-set, skills and knowledge they need to flourish in their next key stage, school and eventually in wider society.

We believe that children learn best when learning is deep, when units are delivered across sustained blocks with specific steps of progression and allow all children to master skills. Quality first teaching is key to our children’s learning and progress. Teachers are supported to maintain and improve their practice through training, mentoring and observing quality teaching. To further support our teachers, each curriculum subject has a dedicated leader who is responsible for driving that curriculum area and for supporting their colleagues to implement new strategies.

At Garden Suburb Junior School, we ensure that pupils experience of assessment is enlightening rather than judgemental. Whilst we work hard to ensure that our pupils make excellent progress and that their attainment is high, we value a qualitative approach to assessment where children are involved in the assessment of their own learning. We work hard to communicate progress with each other, our parents/carers, our governors and local authority.

Our school motto is ‘per ardua ad astra’ which literally means ‘reach for the stars’.

However, we also interpret this to mean ‘work hard to succeed’.

We endeavour to develop these four key learning powers which permeate every element of our curriculum and the way we teach and learn.

Reflectiveness         Resourcefulness         Respect         Resilience

Resilience

We work dynamically when solving complex challenges and when grasping new concepts – we view mistakes as an essential part of the learning process.

Resourcefulness

We are empowered to independently use our classroom resources, our teachers and our peers to further our learning.

Respect

We are respectful of our community, we value our school rules and we strive to show positive learning behaviours in all aspects of our lives.

Reflectiveness

We reflect on what skills we have gained, how we helped ourselves to reach our learning objectives and what targets to set ourselves next.

Click here to read more about building our learning powers.

Across all areas of the curriculum, we aim to provide our children with the opportunity to:

- Learn in a variety of ways and be motivated by challenge.

- Enhance their vocabulary and use it appropriately.

- Agree with, build upon and challenge the ideas of others.

- Reflect meaningfully on their learning and have resilience to learn from mistakes.

- Enjoy their education and be both willing and supported to work independently

- Understand why they are learning what they are learning.