Curriculum Intent

At Amberley we have designed an inclusive curriculum which supports and promotes the culture and climate of the school. In all areas of our curriculum, we seek to include and promote our core values:

Nurturing  Innovation  Aspiration

Nurturing: Working together with care, support and encouragement.

Innovation: Looking for new and exciting way to learn and teach.

Aspiration: Always expecting the very best of our staff and our pupils.

We have designed and planned our curriculum to offer a range of experiences which contribute to every child receiving a broad, balanced, deep and rich curriculum which stimulates and engages all pupils from Nursery to Y6 effectively. Our curriculum, whilst personalised, follows the statutory requirements of the national curriculum, which is ambitious and designed to give all pupils, including disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. The school’s curriculum has been coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning and employment and reflects the school’s local context. We use strengths within our community and local authority to develop career aspirations within children from EYFS upwards and a careful selection of visits and visitors help enhance our curriculum and we hold enrichments weeks which create a palpable buzz of excitement around school including Arts week, DT week, STEM week and Sport and Mental health week.

We monitor our curriculum continually to best meet the needs of our learners and believe in the representation of the curriculum as windows to broaden horizons and look beyond their own knowledge and mirrors to reflect themselves in it. The range of experiences we offer support and champion our culture and ensures that our children benefit from a full range of academic, spiritual, moral, social and cultural activities. We believe that these activities enrich pupils’ lives and make them proud of their British Values and diverse society to which they belong and play an active part. We are proud that our curriculum introduces pupils to the best that has been thought and said and gives them the skills, knowledge, confidence and self-belief to lead a happy and fulfilled life by encouraging them to aim high and work towards their goals.

We believe that every child should feel valued and experience the feeling of success in a wide range of curriculum areas. We believe that through the curriculum we can impact on what is in children’s heads and how they feel about themselves so that they feel knowledgeable, confident and ready to tackle any challenges that they may face. The majority of pupils are highly motivated and persistent in the face of difficulties which is something that we as a school have worked on over recent years with our children. Staff and children model a ‘growth mindset’ where thinking hard and challenge is valued, giving pupils opportunities to grow.

At Amberley, we place high priority on ensuring children’s mental well-being is met as we understand that pupils will not be successful learners unless they are emotionally secure. We therefore adopt a flexible approach to timetabling for those pupils with SEMH needs to ensure that we can meet and respond to any issues which may arise. Children’s well-being is as valued and important as academic development at Amberley. This, alongside our thoughtful approach to SMSC helps to ensure that every child is well cared for and supported. We have a full-time member of staff, who is our SEMH lead and works with pupils on either a small group or 1:1 basis. She also liaises closely with external agencies such as CAMHS, Language and Communication and ‘Connect Mental Health’ to triage pupils and ensure they receive the best matched support to their needs. Pupils actively support the well-being of other pupils and we have recently created a team of ‘Amberley wellness ambassadors’ from Y1 to Y6 to support pupils during break and lunchtimes who work alongside our 'Amberley Angels' team. 

Thanks to a high quality PSHE curriculum, pupils know how to eat healthily, maintain an active lifestyle and keep physically and mentally healthy. They also have an age-appropriate understanding of healthy relationships and sex education as well as how to stay safe online. The PSHE curriculum is carefully planned out and has been consulted upon with staff, parents and pupils. Across the year, the Autumn term focuses on health and well-being, the Spring term focuses on wider world well-being and the Summer term focuses on relationships and sex education. Delivery of our PSHE curriculum enables weekly, timetabled slots for this content to be delivered, whilst being flexible so that it can also be responsive to needs of the class.

Amberley is proud of its continued focus on eco-education and sustainability and we have our own wind turbine which provides power for our school. Our Eco Warriors have recently celebrated the successful renewal of our Green flag for the third time.  We have an Eco Warrior team from Y2 – 6 and the team meets every half term to discuss current issues and how they may be addressed in school. Every new project undertaken at school takes environmental consequences into consideration as we try to minimize the impact on our environment. Our eco-team /school have also taken part in the following projects: working with the charity ‘Grassboots’, a charity based on sustainability supporting low-income families with pre-loved football boots and kits which they distribute when needed, taking part in Outdoor Classroom day and Amberley Grand Spring Clean as well as regular litter picks. They have also visited O’Brien’s Waste Recycling Centre, been part of the Amberley garden transformation and worked in our invention shed. 

We have also recently established our ‘Amberley Forest school’ and have two trained members of staff who passionately lead this exciting venture across 2023-24 two afternoons per week as well as running an after-school Forest school club.

We also have a set of school councillors, led by Miss Lewis, who act as representatives of their classmates in discussing school issues with the headteacher, Mr Rigg, and staff. They have recently been involved in the re-design of Arlo, our Amberley dragon, and revamped our 4 school houses and renamed them as Elm, Maple, Willow and Cedar.  They have met with North Tyneside catering services to consider school menu choice and made suggestions on improvements and changes. We also recently welcomed Killingworth coucillor, Erin Parker-Leonard into school for an assembly to tell us all about her role. 

We are proud of our continual drive to enhance teaching and learning and our professional development programme and have ensured over recent years that our ‘teaching and learning golden threads’ have been woven right through our curriculum and that subject leaders utilise these and build upon them within their own subject discipline. Each member of staff has an ‘Amberley top 10 teaching tips’ laminated card with these teaching and learning golden threads on for planning purposes as well as a teaching and learning checklist for pupils with SEND.  High priority has been given to helping subject leaders raise the profile of their subject within school, ensuring that the structure and organisation of their curriculum is coherently planned and that subject leaders set out the knowledge and skills they expect pupils to learn and remember over time. As a result of this, subject leaders can then robustly check what pupils know and thus have a clear picture of where gaps in pupils’ knowledge may exist.  They have also delivered high quality CPD to all staff in their subject area in conjunction with the teaching and learning lead which has involved a focus on vocabulary progression, adaptive teaching and consistent lesson design. This work is still ongoing at Amberley across every subject and remains one of our key priorities for 2023-24.

All of our curriculum intent, implementation and impact documents are clearly and visibly shared with parents and carers via our school webpage, alongside curriculum knowledge organisers. We regularly share learning experiences and successes via our page on ‘X’ and on ‘Tapestry’ for EYFS.

Further links below show our annual long term plan overviews for every subject in every year group and our medium term cross-curricular plans for the topic being covered in the current term for History / Geography and Science. 

If you wish to find out more about our curriculum, please do not hesitate to contact us. You will find our assessment policy and teaching and learning policy on our ‘policies’ page.

Curriculum Implementation

The Early Years

At Amberley our curriculum in Early Years ensures that all 17 aspects within the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile are covered and children learn by engaging in well-planned, play based learning activities that meet the developmental needs of all our children. The EYFS provision provides opportunities for our children to independently explore learning opportunities based on their own fascinations as well as structured adult led activities to ensure every child achieves their next steps in learning.

Our rising 3 provision provides the building blocks to Nursery readiness that includes coverage of the Early Years curriculum and is planned through the interest of pupils. 

The EYFS provision underpins our school’s three core values: nurturing; innovation and aspiration by providing a rich learning environment which develops our children’s experiences, attitudes, knowledge, skills, and vocabulary to ensure our pupils are school ready and achieve a good level of development. Our Early Years Team work closely together to ensure that the children have a progressive range of learning opportunities based on their assessed needs.

Staff across our Early Years Team also communicate strongly with parents – we use ‘Tapestry’ as a means of communication between home and school to ensure that parents are fully informed of their child’s progress and wow moments and operate an open-door policy to discuss any concerns parents or pupils may have.

Teachers conduct rigorous cross-moderations across the provisions within school and through local authority and cluster meetings to ensure curriculum and assessment is consistent throughout the setting.

Year 1 – Year 6

As mentioned above in the intent section, Amberley is proud of the rich curriculum we offer our pupils.  In Y1-6, teaching in the morning centres around Maths and English to ensure that our pupils can succeed in the next phase of their learning with a view to reaching their full potential and gaining successful employment in the future. Our lessons include Maths, English, Maths meetings and whole class reading or phonics. 

Our afternoons are dedicated to our foundation subjects and intervention programme, with spelling teaching often taking place for the first 15 minutes of each afternoon.

Teachers carefully plan out what will be covered in each unit or topic across a half-term for every subject to ensure that they are both meeting the statutory requirements of the national curriculum as well as providing an engaging, personalised curriculum which is broad and balanced and includes both support and challenge. Following on from this long-term plan jigsaw (above on the website), staff then plan their medium term plans, which centre around a topic title or ‘enquiry question’. Their plan considers what the intent of the unit is (what we want children to be able to do / remember by the end of the unit), how it will be implemented  (sequenced) and how impact will be judged. It also details the hook into the learning, which national curriculum objectives will be covered, how the topic develops SMSC and which visitors or visits will take place. We also place a large importance on vocabulary and look at how the topic will include both subject specific vocabulary and transferable vocabulary.  What prior knowledge will be needed to access and unlock new learning is also carefully considered by staff.

Prior to a unit beginning, pupils may be given a ‘Knowledge Organiser’ which details the key facts and information which children will need to access the topic. It contains the essential facts about the topic, key vocabulary or technical terms and their meaning and often maps or pictures to facilitate understanding. We use the Knowledge Organiser as a regular retrieval tool, particularly at the start of the unit. Teachers often use short, low stake quizzes, play games or use partner discussion to discuss anything ‘extra’ that pupils may have found out on top of the Knowledge Organiser to deepen knowledge. Over time, pupils will build up a core bank of knowledge and vocabulary that will help them excel in their achievements and understand the world around them. The revision and learning of the Knowledge Organisers will also help pupils embed their knowledge and support them as they access more complicated content in later years.

All long term jigsaws, current medium term plans and current Knowledge Organisers are placed on our school website to ensure that parents are aware of what their children are learning about and working towards.  Subject leaders will also detail information about their subject on their subject leader pages which will include their long term plan across the school from EYFS to Y6.

Reading

Reading is prioritised right the way across our curriculum to allow pupils to access the full curriculum offer as we understand that fluency of reading is a key indicator for future success and we know that pupils who struggle in reading struggle in all subjects. As a result, a rigorous and sequential approach to the reading curriculum develops pupils’ fluency, confidence and reading for pleasure. Phonics is taught from Reception to Year 2 using the Read, Write, Inc scheme (and continued into KS2 where needed) and reading books match closely to the phonics knowledge pupils are taught when they are learning to read. At all stages, reading attainment is assessed and gaps are addressed quickly and effectively for pupils via a phonics master class in KS1. The mantra of both our phonics and maths master class is ‘keep up, not catch up.’ Whole class reading follows on from phonics in KS1 and we also use ‘boosting reading potential’ (BRP) and RWI ‘Fresh Start’ as interventions across KS2 to boost reading fluency for those children who are in most need.

Class reader texts are read daily to our pupils for pleasure and posters are displayed on each classroom door with the current class reader on. 

Extra-Curricular Provision

Here at Amberley, we provide a wide range of opportunities to nurture, develop and stretch pupils’ talents and interests including a range of extra-curricular activities including sports, arts and performing arts, choir, coding, French, History, cycling, football and residential visits.

We believe that learning takes place outside of the classroom as well as inside and therefore are passionate about providing opportunities for pupils beyond the curriculum. These include residentials both nationally and internationally, cultural visits to galleries, museums and the theatre, opportunities to cook and bake and visits to local places of worship. In order to keep costs down for parents and carers, we also invite visitors into school to talk to the children. 

Pupils also have the opportunity to volunteer for a range of roles including Amberley Angels, Sports Leaders, Digital Leaders, School Councillors, Eco Warriors, Reading and Wellness Ambassadors and House Captains.

Communication to parents

Communication to parents about how their child is performing in school as well as what they are experiencing is of upmost importance to us and we do this in a number of ways:

• We hold parents’ evenings during the Autumn and Spring terms and send out pupils annual reports in the Summer term.
• Phonics workshops to parents (recording of this is also available on school website)
• Reading and maths workshops to parents (recording of this is also available on school website)
• Website tutorials to help parents understand different calculation methods used in school (helping hands videos)
• Back to school open afternoons in September for parents to attend and then come to their child’s new classroom to take part in an activity with their child and teacher
• Long term jigsaws
• Knowledge organisers
• Homework, including spellings 
• School website and class pages
• X– whole school account and individual class pages
• Reading challenges which encourage and foster links between home and school reading
• Handwriting competitions
• SEMH coffee mornings
• Family learning sessions with the Northern Learning Trust via the North of Tyne Pupil Poverty funding programme 
• Leavers' assemblies at the end of Year 6 
• Christmas performances
• Parent-child school lunches 

Governors

We have named link governors for each subject, Early Years, GDPR, Safeguarding, Special Needs and sustainability. The governors liaise with the subject leaders of these areas and monitor the way the school teaches these subjects, holding leaders to account. We also invite Governors into school to meet with subject leaders and take part in curriculum walks, book looks and pupil interviews.  Curriculum updates are generated by SLT termly which are presented in a report that is shared with the full governing body. Specific subject leaders may be requested to present details of initiatives, or development to the governing body at various points of the school year. Governors can also review each subject via the school development plan and/or subject action plans.

Assessment

Assessment is a key part of embedded practice at Amberley and using assessment to check pupils’ understanding in order to inform teaching as well as staff checking pupils’ understanding and identifying and correct misunderstandings are two essential factors. We believe that when used effectively, assessment helps pupils to embed knowledge and use it fluently and assists teachers in producing clear next steps for our pupils. There is a clear emphasis at Amberley to use formative assessment to see the learning that is taking place in the classroom. This may take the form of finding out what prior knowledge pupils have so that is can be built upon, unpicking misconceptions, checking learning within and at the end of lessons and providing effective feedback to move learning forward.

Feedback at Amberley is meaningful, motivating and manageable and can take many different forms depending upon the age of the pupil, the subject area and individual needs. In all instances, the outcomes of feedback may well lead to targets being set for pupils future learning, and may lead to adaptation of future lessons through planning, grouping or adaptation of tasks. It is vital that teachers evaluate the work that children undertake in lessons, and use information obtained from this to allow them to adjust their teaching. Feedback occurs at one of four common stages in the learning process:

1. Immediate feedback – at the point of teaching.

2. Summary feedback - at the end of a lesson/task.

3. Next lesson feedforward – further teaching enabling the children to identify and improve for themselves areas for development identified by the teacher upon review of work after a previous lesson had finished.

4. Summative feedback – tasks planned to give teachers definitive feedback about whether a child has securely mastered the material under study.

All staff use their own personal mark book which contains whole class feedback sheets for all English and foundation subjects. Using these forms teachers should highlight: Work to praise and share (based on the objective of the lesson); Misconceptions/ children who need further support; Basic skills work to address (presentation, spelling and grammar) and any further notes for the next lesson. The following lesson will then start with a 10 minute feedback session. Within this time children receive whole class feedback about strengths and areas for development and direct teaching to help them identify and address their own areas for development based on the whole class feedback form completed at the end of the previous lesson.

Within a Maths lesson, time is often allocated to allow children to access the answers to their work and therefore self mark their work. The timing of this is decided upon by the teacher but happens at a time to allow a child to be further supported if needed, or further challenged. Once a child has marked their work, they may opt for further support. Throughout the lesson, teachers will use their observations and discussions to challenge children. Teachers will look at Maths books at the end of a lesson, check that individual questions are marked, and, if necessary, direct a child towards a same day master class, or to work with adult support in the next lesson.

Juniper Sonar Tracking  is the assessment system we use to record summative assessment data. All class teachers are responsible for inputting accurate data, (reading, writing and maths data is entered termly and  foundations subject data is entered annually). This can then be used by teachers, curriculum leads and SLT to analyse pupil data, identify gaps in learning and deliver genuine impact.

End of unit or ‘post assessments’ take place across foundation subjects and in maths and termly summative assessments are conducted in reading and maths. Hot writes are completed by pupils at the end of an English unit of work. These assessments are used to determine how much children have remembered and retained and they help pupils embed and use knowledge fluently. They allow checking for understanding to take place and inform teaching and they help us to understand different starting points and gaps.

Curriculum Impact

We use regular and robust triangulated monitoring to gauge the impact of our curriculum design. This impact is evidenced as followed:

Leaders at all levels review learning through learning walks and lesson visits.

Effective feedback to pupils is used to move practice forward.

We strive to ensure that our pupils’ attainment and progress are in line or exceeding their potential. We measure this using local authority and national data.

Rigorous assessment and tracking of children’s performance takes place to inform classroom practice, allowing pupils to make good progress and close attainment groups. Particular attention is paid to vulnerable groups within this termly data analysis. Pupil progress meetings with the HT, DHT, SENco and class teacher are then held to unpick the data further and analyse individual pupil performance. This allows us to identify where pupils are not making sufficient progress and thus take immediate action.

Subject leaders are aware of the strengths and areas for improvement through monitoring and evaluation activities including book looks, learning walks and data analysis and use this information to produce purposeful action plans that continue to develop the curriculum offer. Staff also take part in self-scrutiny book looks and shared whole staff book looks to share good practice. The Deputy Headteacher also meets with year group teams / subject leaders to hold termly curriculum clinics where the intent, implementation and impact of the curriculum is discussed and reviewed. A specific focus is decided upon each time.

Peer mentoring often takes place across the year where staff pair up to observe one another teaching across a series of lessons and share good practice.

Pupil voice - The curriculum is discussed with pupils, we discuss what they enjoy and what they would change and why.  We ask them to tell us about their learning, assessing what they have remembered and retained to help inform our teaching and learning across school.

The design of the curriculum ensures that the majority of needs of individual and small groups of children can be met within the environment of high quality first wave teaching, supported by targeted interventions where appropriate and adaptive teaching. This has a positive impact on children’s outcomes and is reviewed regularly. Where additional provision is required, this is delivered and based on the needs of those particular children.  Teachers work closely with the school SENco to ensure that individual pupils’ needs are met and dedicated time is provided for these meetings.  Regular meetings are held with parents to inform them of their child’s progress towards specific targets or goals.

Our curriculum ensures that we develop well-rounded citizens with a clear understanding of our school values (nurturing, innovation and aspiration) as well as friendship, resilience and respect. Our curriculum also addresses negative stereotyping through investigating similarities and differences and promoting acceptance, tolerance, diversity, citizenship and human rights. Pupils will be motivated by a strong sense of morality. They will be able to make sense of an increasingly globalised, complex and rapidly changing world and will be able to decide what is right and what is wrong and will be resilient to the influence of others.

Learning dispositions are also developed which leads to both success now and in the future. Pupils demonstrate greater levels of resilience, motivation and a growth mindset when faced with different types of challenge. They develop attitudes and dispositions to make positive contributions to the world they live in. Our daily interactions provide a regular check on this. 

Staff are exposed to high quality CPD, delivered both internally and externally, which is carefully chosen by the SLT to match the priorities of the school.

A high proportion of pupils participate in extra-curricular clubs, trips and activities that widen experience and develop self-confidence.

Each year, a school self-evaluation form and school development plan is produced which has been formulated using the information gathered above. The purpose of the school development plan is to review and evaluate the impact of previous developments, identify key areas for school improvement over the coming year and to outline the action to be taken in key areas. This is then shared with key stakeholders including staff, governors and our school development partner from the local authority.  The school budget is matched to the priorities for the school development plan.