What does your child learn at school each day?

We follow the National Curriculum for KS1 and KS2. Subjects taught are:

English, Maths, Science, Computing, Art and Design, Design Technology, History, Geography, PSHE, French, Music, RE and PE.

We follow White Rose Maths Scheme of Learning (mixed age); the National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics (NCETM) spines and the Non Statutory Framework with Ready-to-Progress criteria  for Maths. 

We follow the Norfolk Agreed Syllabus for RE.

In the Foundation Stage, we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage guidelines. We use Read Write Inc to teach phonics and the early development of reading in Swallowtail and Kingfisher classes.

For more information, please see individual class pages under the 'Children' menu of our website. Please do come and ask your child's class teacher if you have any questions about the curriculum.

How does our curriculum work?

There are three main stages involved in our curriculum -

1. Intent - how we have designed our curriculum, what we teach and why this is appropriate for our children here at Filby.

The 'golden thread' running through our curriculum is the 'Filby Way', our set of values agreed with all stakeholders which are integral to everything we teach. For example, you will see in our subject vision statements how each value is taught through that subject. We have designed our curriculum with a mixture of substantive (facts) and disciplinary (skills) knowledge as we believe that a knowledge rich curriculum is only useful if children can apply it, for example teaching them the skills involved in being a scientist.

Finally we ensure there is progression and that current teaching builds on a firm base of prior knowledge. See the mental modelling diagram below by Efrat Furst.

In this top example on the left a firm knowledge base is in place (blue triangles) for example children knowing addition and subtraction facts. This enables children to add to this with more complex concepts (orange triangles) such as algebra.

This bottom example shows how more complex knowledge can be lost and not understood unless a firm knowledge base is in place (sparse blue triangles_. 

2. Implementation - how we deliver the curriculum; what our children's learning will look like.

We tailor our lessons using a variety of methods be it visual, abstract or concrete to ensure that all learners make progress. Our progression maps and curriculum overviews for each subject below detail how we do this. We regularly revisit learning to ensure it is embedded and children can recall and use it.

In this adapted version of Ebbinghaus' 1885 'Forgetting Curve' you can see how with each revisit of information the percentage of information retained increases. Hence our rationale for revisiting learning and building upon previously learnt concepts.

We have our own pedagogical framework for teaching called the 'Filby Principles' - this is an evidence based approach to ensuring that information is learnt (that there is a change in long term memory).

3. Impact - how we can be sure that our curriculum is having an impact and that all children are learning as we want them to be.

We use a range of strategies to assess progress including, but not limited to: low stakes quizzes; talking to children about their learning; before and after tasks (known as cold and hot tasks); summative assessments through testing at the end of a unit; teacher assessment; looking at the evidence of learning in children's books.

What do our children learn, how and when?