Rationale
Horniman School Curriculum
Curriculum Intent
The curriculum at Horniman School is designed to be engaging, broad and rich. It is a curriculum that evolves, based on the needs of our children and changes in the world around us. It takes into account the local context of the school, experiences and backgrounds of our children and provides them with relevant and memorable learning experiences to enable them to become rounded successful citizens. It supports and promotes the vision and values of our school.
Children leave Horniman Primary School, ready for Secondary School, equipped with the experiences, skills and knowledge they need to function as young people and adults in the 21st Century. They develop a sense of belonging and desire to contribute and influence their local and global communities.
The curriculum is inclusive and aims for all pupils to be challenged. It focuses on vocabulary development and experiences which increase children’s cultural capital to allow them to reach full potential
It fulfils the requirements of the National Curriculum through ambitious and challenging enquiry led learning, with clear progression and specific learning goals for every subject. It is deep, allowing children to return to and build upon previous learning, applying skills and knowledge to new challenges.
All curriculum leaders show understanding of key concepts related to curriculum design, ensuring there is clear skills and knowledge progression and sequencing allowing all members of the school community fully understand the rationale behind our curriculum.
Depth
Our curriculum at Horniman Primary school is carefully designed, organised and planned for depth of learning.
Our definition of progress is; the widening and deepening of essential knowledge, skills, understanding and learning behaviours. We design, organise and plan our curriculum to ensure that children are not merely covering content but achieving a depth to their learning which enables them to use their skills and understanding in all areas of the curriculum. Our careful curriculum design and planning means that we build in many opportunities for repetition and practise. This ensures that children are able to revisit previous learning, which allows them to gradually develop a deeper understanding of the knowledge, skills and processes within subjects, at their own pace and in the best possible way for each individual child.
Balance
At Horniman Primary school we carefully design, plan and implement a curriculum to provide balance for every pupil.
It is our underlying belief 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 head and how they feel about themselves, so that they feel clever, confident and ready to tackle any challenge they may face. We have designed, organised and planned our curriculum to ensure every child receives an appropriate mix of academic and personal development which means that in practice our curriculum places equal importance on core and foundation subjects. We place high priority on ensuring children’s physical and mental wellbeing are met. We understand that children will not be successful learners unless they are emotionally secure, therefore we carefully design our curriculum and adopt a flexible approach to timetabling to ensure that we can meet and respond to any issues which may arise. Children’s physical and mental wellbeing are as valued and important as academic development. We carefully monitor children’s progress with their personal development and our well planned and thoughtful approach to SMSC helps to ensure that every child is well cared for and supported. Our balanced approach to the curriculum is not at the expense of high standards in core subject areas. High standards and enabling children to reach national expectations and above is of vital importance if they are to succeed at the next stage of their education and go on to achieve full and happy lives and careers. Our full and rich curriculum, with its excellent range of experiences, ensures that every child at Horniman Primary School makes excellent progress both academically and personally. Our unique curriculum ensures that every child is given the opportunity to shine and flourish.
Breadth
At Horniman Primary school we carefully design, plan and implement a curriculum which provides breadth for every pupil.
Careful analysis and discussion about our pupils’ backgrounds, life experiences and culture has helped us to design a curriculum with four key drivers underpinning every subject area.
Our curriculum drivers are:
Creativity - we aim to provide experiences that allow the child's creativity to flourish and develop ways to creatively approach all areas of learning
Diversity - we aim to provide experiences that allow children to recognise and celebrate the diversity in our world, both on a local and global scale and understand it is their duty to challenge prejudice in all its forms
Enquiry - we aim to provide experiences where children can be curious and find out about the world around them, with teachers as facilitators of learning
Environment – we aim to provide experiences which help our children value their environment and understand their responsibilities towards sustaining their local and global environment.
These are our curriculum drivers and are evident in all that we do. The curriculum also reflects the schools location, as an urban London school, and the local community, as well as the interests and passions of the staff and children.
We have designed and planned our curriculum to offer a range of experiences which contribute to every child receiving a full and rich curriculum. These support and champion our culture and ensures that our children benefit from a full range of academic, spiritual, moral, social and cultural activities. These activities enrich their lives and those of our whole school community and make them proud of their British values and diverse society to which belong and play an active part. We are proud that our curriculum gives our children the skills, confidence and self-belief to lead a happy and fulfilled life by encouraging them to aim high and work towards their goals and dreams in life.
The National Curriculum is used as a basis for designing Horniman School's curriculum to meet the needs of our children while at the same time offering a unique curriculum, with a clear progression of learning and specific learning goals for every subject.
The National Curriculum can be viewed here. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/425601/PRIMARY_national_curriculum.pdf
Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development, alongside Fundamental British Values are woven throughout our curriculum and embedded in all subjects.
For more information visit the subject pages from the curriculum drop down menu.
Organisation
The Horniman School Curriculum is organised into subject specific topics. The topics vary in length, some lasting two or three weeks, while others may last the whole year and be revisited at different intervals. Meaningful links are made between subjects, where appropriate, for example in Y2 in History the children learn about the Great Fire of London, this is complemented by baking bread in Design and Technology, dance based on the Fire of London, art work about colour mixing whilst painting flames and writing poems in English.
There is also time and space for whole school topics (e.g. Book, Art, Science or Maths weeks) or topics that reflect contemporary events (e.g. the Olympics or Royal Wedding etc.)
Mathematics and Literacy are taught daily as discrete subjects that link to the topics, wherever possible, to allow a comprehensive coverage of skills and provide opportunities to apply what has been learnt in different contexts across the curriculum.
Enrichment
As well as designing a stimulating engaging curriculum we are committed to providing enrichment opportunities that enhance learning and contribute to the Horniman experience:
Cultural Offer
We believe that all children should have the opportunity to experince high quality arts and culture. We make use of the fantastic resource of living in London. Children have the chance to work with professional musicians,, actors and artists. Recently we have worked in partnership with the LSO, Trinity Music, The Southbank Centre, Shakespeare in Schools, Peoplescape Theatre and a professional dancer. All children at Horniman have the opportunity to watch theatre, dance and music performances, as well as visiting a host of museums and galleries.
Forest school and outdoor learning
Reception and Y1 classes have weekly forest school sessions in our on site forest school and have regular visits to Sydenham Woods. Older children use Forest School linked to their topics.
There is a forest School club after school .
The outdoor learning environment is also used throughout the school and we encourage children to learn outdoors wherever possible using the amphitheatre, playground, pond and forest school areas.
Philosophy
All classes from Year 2 to Year 6 have a half term of weekly Philosophy sessions led by Peter Worsley, an internationally renowned educator in this field. Peter works with teachers to link his input to the curriculum being covered at that time and teacher use enquiry based methods across the curriculum.
The Arts
Music
Horniman School is committed to the arts and employs specialist teachers to teach music. All classes have weekly music sessions with the music teacher in which they learn to play a variety of percussion instruments, compose pieces of music, learn songs and appreciate a wide variety of music from different cultures.
All children in Key Stage 2 learn an instrument (currently recorders and ukulele) taught by a music specialist and we encourage children to learn an additional instrument through our peripatetic teachers from Lewisham Music Services. Children currently learn guitar, violin, clarinet and flute and have the opportunity to perform regularly in assemblies.
There is also a school choir who meet weekly and perform in a variety of settings, including school fairs, old people’s homes and at The Southbank Centre.
We showcase the music at Horniman through assemblies and performances throughout the year.
We perform at autumn assemblies, winter songs, a spring assembly at the Horniman Museum and at Nativity and End of Year productions.
Art
Art is taught by class teachers, and the school also comes together for Arts Week, in which the whole school work together on an artistic theme. In 2022 Arts Week resulted in a Carnival that celebrated our curriculum drivers of creativity, the environment and diversity. The children made costumes, willow sculptures, protest banners and learnt songs, dances and drumming.
There are also a wide variety of art clubs after school which children can attend.
Dance
All children are taught dance during their PE lessons and other dances liked to their topics.
We have a dance week in the summer term.
In previous years, we have organised a whole school carnival, with Samba drumming and dancing and Folk Dance week, in which classes learnt a number of folk dances, such as maypole and Morris dances, led by dance specialists and performed them in the Horniman Gardens.
We also have dance clubs who have the opportunity to perform in assemblies.
Drama
Drama is used throughout the curriculum through activities such as freeze frame, hot seating, story squares and conscience alley.
In addition Year 2 and Year 6 perform a play, with the other year groups making up the choir. Children are involved in making props and costumes. In recent years Year 6 have performed Bugsy Malone, Alice in Wonderland and Shakespeare Rocks! Year 2 have performed Whoops-a-Daisy Angel and Strictly the Nativity.
Every year Y5 take part in Shakespeare in schools and have the opportunity to learn and perform a Shakespeare play at a local theatre.
All classes perform a class assembly in the Spring term, based on their current topic to which parents/carers are invited. These include presenting drama, songs, animations, films and other work from their current learning.
We also regularly invited drama groups to perform at school and organise visits to theatres.
Sport
We believe in providing high quality sports and fitness provision to help our children live a healthy lifestyle.
Physical Education is taught by a specialist sports coach as well as by class teachers.
All classes have twice weekly PE lessons. Children in reception have daily 5-a-day aerobic sessions.
Click here for more information about 5-a-day fitness http://5-a-day.tv/
The school also competes in a variety of sports competitions, such as football, cricket, multisports, tag rugby and athletics.
We hold an annual sports day at JAGs school playing fields.
There are many after school enrichment clubs such as netball, karate, ballet, football, cricket and multisports.