Curriculum

Our Vision

‘Improving Every Day’

Our Core Purpose

Our core purpose is:

To create independent, confident learners who aspire to, and improve every single day and grow to understand their place in the world. We believe that by striving to be better every day the progress we can make in our learning is limitless. Learning at Francis Baily is an active process that enables us to further develop our knowledge, skills and understanding so that we can experience success and grow in confidence.

 Our core values that enable us to achieve this are:

• Resilience
• Aspiration
• Respect
• Curiosity
• Collaboration
• Courage

Curriculum Intent Statement

At Francis Baily, our curriculum is underpinned by our mission to create independent, confident learners that aspire to improve every single day, and that develop a sense of their place in the world. Our curriculum will do this in the following ways:

• To provide a reading rich curriculum which develops learning and results in the acquisition of knowledge which is retained and built upon.
• To enrich the curriculum with first hand experiences so that skills and knowledge is built on real life understanding, and a love of learning is fostered through enjoyment.
• To build experiences into the curriculum that celebrate difference and encourage debate about right and wrong, and fairness. Through these experiences children will learn respect and resilience and be prompted to be curious about the world they live in.
• To provide a broad and challenging curriculum which builds progressively upon acquired language and skills so that all children can aspire to do their best.

General Principles

Our curriculum will give children the opportunity to:

• Learn within a coherent and progressive framework
• Build upon first-hand experience and prior knowledge
• See clear links between different aspects of their learning
• Develop a rich and deep subject knowledge
• Experience the challenge and enjoyment of learning
• Use a variety of real life contexts for children to develop and practise their skills
• Help children to understand how they learn in order that they may become more successful at it.

Purpose

At Francis Baily, we want children to have the confidence to move forward with their learning and know how they relate to and influence the world around them. As a result, we hope that they become happy in their own skins and confident about themselves as learners and as members of the community.

To view the current topic maps for each Year group, please see the individual year group page.

Cornerstones Curriculum

The Cornerstones Curriculum is a creative and thematic approach to learning that is mapped to the 2014 primary national curriculum to ensure comprehensive coverage of national expectations. It is based on a child-centred pedagogy called The Four Cornerstones and is delivered through Imaginative Learning Projects (ILPs) and Knowledge Rich Projects (KRPs), which provide a rich menu of exciting and motivating learning activities that make creative links between all aspects of children’s learning.

We believe children learn better when they are encouraged to use their imagination and apply their learning to engaging contexts. Our curriculum provides many learning challenges throughout the academic year that require children to solve problems, apply themselves creatively and express their knowledge and understanding effectively.

Cornerstones also provide a rigorous skills and knowledge framework that outlines the end of year expectations in all subjects. These skills and knowledge are tied to activities and are age-related so that staff can track children’s progress and identify their individual learning needs.