Our curriculum

The International Primary Curriculum

The International Primary Curriculum (IPC) is an internationally minded curriculum that is used in a number of countries around the world. The IPC provides opportunities for global learning – allowing pupils and staff to make links to the many cultures and languages spoken by children of our school. The goal of the IPC is to nurture a love of learning through a combination of academic, personal and international learning. Children will develop many skills which they will need in order to face the world of tomorrow confidently. The beating heart of any educational establishment is learning. Learning can take place in many forms – academically, socially, spiritually, emotionally and physically. Our curriculum provides many ways for children to learn and develop.

Boothferry adopted the IPC in 2015 and we form part of a global learning community who use the IPC to improve children’s learning. Children at Boothferry learn through a series of units of work, of which there are over 130 to choose from, enabling us to make the breadth of our curriculum wider than ever before. We believe that knowledge precedes creativity so each unit is carefully selected to maximise pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding. We also believe that children remember what they think about, so selecting units of work that will inspire and motivate the children is paramount in our decision making, we aim to offer pupils experiences that they would not normally choose. Children experience each unit as a theme with links made to English and Mathematics lessons so that their learning has greater meaning to them. The units of work have suggested tasks linked to National Curriculum learning objectives; however the nature of the curriculum allows staff to be creative and focus upon the needs of our children and individual classes based on knowledge harvests and previous assessments.

Our school on average has over 10 different languages spoken at any one time with class EAL at over 50% in some cases on a regular basis. Importantly, the IPC has a strong element of internationalism built into each unit of work. Through the curriculum at Boothferry we provide opportunities for our children to:

• recognise their own culture and have a sense of identity;
• be open-minded;
• be respectful of other cultures and beliefs;
• be aware of and celebrate diversity and commonality;
• have respect for and value other people, their ideas and opinions;
• be able to communicate (have good interpersonal skills);
• be adaptable;
• be aware of and show an interest in global issues.

Nobody can predict the nature of work and life opportunities that will be available to our children in the future. Indeed many of the jobs of the future do not even exist today. With this in mind, our nine Personal Learning Goals are an integral part of the curriculum. The nine Personal Goals underpin those individual qualities and learning dispositions that children will find essential in the 21st century. At Boothferry, the Personal Goals are at the heart of our school – not just within the IPC.

We feel that our mission statement encompasses everything we want to achieve at Boothferry Primary School…’Embracing diversity, building a brighter future together.’

Our curriculum route plan (cross referenced to the National Curriculum to ensure complete coverage):

Curriculum Intent

Our vision: ‘Embracing diversity, building a brighter future together’.

‘Learning at Boothferry inspires us to discover, explore and use our knowledge, skills and understanding to develop ourselves as citizens of tomorrow’.

At Boothferry Primary School pupils’ learning is at the heart of everything we do. We recognise that a curriculum has to be broad and balanced and offer pupils opportunities to grow as individuals as well as learners, in order to prepare our pupils for life beyond school in a diverse and ever changing world.  Our curriculum goes beyond statutory requirements from EYFS to Year 6, making the breadth of our curriculum wider than ever before.

A primary focus of the curriculum at Boothferry Primary School is to raise pupils’ aspirations, create a sense of personal pride and achievement, provide a purpose and relevance for learning and ultimately help every individual pupil find their strengths and interests. This curriculum is underpinned by our learning goals, which permeate through everything we do such as perseverance, enquiry, adaptability, resilience and compassion.

Boothferry provides all pupils with a strong foundation for learning, ensuring they are well prepared for the next stage in their journey.  We believe that knowledge precedes creativity so each unit is carefully selected to maximise pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding. We also believe that children remember what they think about, so selecting units of work that will inspire and motivate the children is paramount in our decision-making, we aim to develop pupils cultural capital by offering pupils experiences that they would not normally choose.  Throughout our curriculum, pupils acquire the necessary behaviours and habits to become effective life-long learners, developing enquiring minds and igniting their curiosity. All pupils are challenged in their school life; learning from failures and celebrating successes, we believe in a growth mindset approach. Our curriculum empowers individual pupils, regardless of their starting point, to develop a passion for learning and a real thirst for knowledge.

The curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced allowing all pupils to further deepen their knowledge, skills and understanding in all aspects of learning. We recognise that the key skills of reading, writing, oracy and numeracy are crucial in equipping our pupils with the necessary skills to live in modern Britain, and given our diverse school context we focus on providing a language rich curriculum. We also understand that test outcomes are not our sole purpose. Therefore we enhance our curriculum and capital culture further by providing our pupils with a wide range of new and exciting learning experiences such as learning to play a musical instrument, participating in school performances, sports tournaments and a wealth of extra-curricular clubs as well as attending educational trips and inviting a range of visitors into school. Our curriculum provision enables pupils to deepen their understanding of British Values as well as being internationally minded which is defined as having an awareness of others and ourselves. We promote this through regular local and international fundraising events and charity work.  At Boothferry we firmly believe that our pupils should be given the opportunity to have a voice and to develop their leadership skills. Within school, pupils take on active leadership roles such as school council, playground leaders, digital leaders and sports leaders.

Our school on average has over 18 different languages spoken at any one time with class EAL at over 50% in some cases on a regular basis.  Importantly, the IPC has a strong element of internationalism built into each unit of work. Through the curriculum at Boothferry we provide opportunities for our children to:

• recognise their own culture and have a sense of identity;
• be open-minded;
• be respectful of other cultures and beliefs;
• be aware of and celebrate diversity and commonality;
• have respect for and value other people, their ideas and opinions;
• be able to communicate (have good interpersonal skills);
• be adaptable;
• be aware of and show an interest in global issues.

Linked to the curriculum provision at Boothferry, we engage with the wider community by establishing positive relationships through our open door policy and our well-respected family welfare officer.  Parents and carers are fundamental in their child’s development and as a school, we encourage this through parent workshops, curriculum events such as entry and exit points, sports days, school fairs and performances.

The curriculum provision at Boothferry Primary School enables all pupils to live out our school vision in all its fullness, embracing diversity, building a better future together

Curriculum Implementation:

Our curriculum is implemented with our Curriculum intent at the heart of everything we do at Boothferry Primary School.  Curriculum maps and medium terms plans are produced for each year group ensuring clarity of National Curriculum coverage.  Some of our content is subject specific whilst other content is combined in a cross-curricular approach enabling us to put knowledge into context.  Our curriculum has a strong emphasis on progression of knowledge, skills and understanding, which are regularly re-visited in the form of a variety of retrieval exercises (this can be seen in our progression of skills documents).  This regular re-visiting enables knowledge to be committed to long-term memory.

Our curriculum design is based on units of learning that have been developed around a process which supports the ways in which children learn best from the ages of 3-12 years.  It is important that children don’t just experience the structure and process of the IPC, but also that they understand why they are learning in this way.

The Entry Point is an exciting and memorable event that launches every IPC unit. The aim of the entry point is to get children thinking about, and engaged with, the learning that’s to follow.

The Knowledge Harvest provides teachers with the chance to find out what children already know about the theme and helps them to personalise the unit by finding out what children want to learn in order to tailor their lessons accordingly. It reinforces connections between existing and new learning and allows children to take ownership of their learning.

Explaining the Theme provides teachers, children and parents with the big picture of the unit before it launches so that connections between subjects and concepts can be facilitated.

The Big Picture provides teachers with subject-based background information and research, which links to the learning contained within each unit.  This is summarised a knowledge organiser that introduces a unit of work (this is also displayed in classrooms as a reference point).

Research Activities: Each lesson begins with a ‘Do It Now’ task – the purpose if which is to recap prior learning and ensure children have the opportunity to retain knowledge.  Each subject area has planned research activities which are designed to make sure that children can access information in a way that is appropriate to them, drawing on a wide range of learning approaches such as role play, digital learning, library research and so on. IPC research activities are experiential and exploratory. Some are collaborative; others are designed to develop individual enquiry and resilience, and therefore help to embed and develop the IPC Personal Goals.

Recording Activities: Each lesson begins with a ‘Do It Now’ task – the purpose if which is to recap prior learning and ensure children have the opportunity to retain knowledge.  The recording activities enable children to process and present the information they have gained in their research activities through a range of approaches which tap into their different strengths and interests, and enable them to get better at other ways of recording. This might involve learning through digital recording, drama, musical compositions, maps, graphs, experiments, art work and so on.

End of topic assessment:  Each unit ends with an ‘end of topic’ mini assessment where children’s’ knowledge is tested in a low stakes quiz that is based on the substantive knowledge shown in the knowledge organizer.

Exit Point: The exit point completes every unit. It helps children to draw on their prior learning, reminding them of all the connections between subjects that they have made, and creates time and opportunities to build their understanding of their learning, and to reflect on this individually and as a group. The exit point is an excellent chance to engage with parents, guardians and carers and involve them in celebrating the learning that has been achieved.

The IPC types of learning: knowledge, skills and understanding

The Learning Goals (which cover and go beyond National Curriculum statutory requirements) are the foundation on which the IPC is built. They define what children might be expected to know, what they might be able to do and the understandings they might develop in their academic, personal and international learning. At Boothferry, we believe that differentiating between knowledge, skills and understanding is crucial to the development of children’s learning. We also believe that knowledge, skills and understanding have their own distinct characteristics that impact on how each is planned for, learned, taught, assessed and reported on.

1. Substantive Knowledge: refers to factual information. Knowledge is relatively straightforward to teach and assess (through quizzes, tests, multiple choice, etc.), even if it is not always that easy to recall. You can ask your children to research the knowledge they have to learn but you could also tell them the knowledge they need to know. Knowledge is continually changing and expanding – this is a challenge for schools that have to choose what knowledge children should know and learn in a restricted period of time.
2. Disciplinary Skills: refer to things children are able to do. Skills have to be learned practically and need time to be practised. The good news about skills is the more you practise, the better you get at them! Skills are also transferable and tend to be more stable than substantive knowledge – this is true for almost all school subjects.
3. Understanding: refers to the development or ‘grasping’ of conceptual ideas, the ‘lightbulb’ moment that we all strive for. Understanding is always developing. None of us ever ‘gets there’, so you can’t teach or control understanding, but what the IPC units do allow you to do is provide a whole range of different experiences through which children’s understandings can deepen.

At Boothferry, children, staff and governors have defined knowledge, skill and understanding as:

• Substantive knowledge is something that we know is a fact. It is true. Knowledge is always right or wrong.
• A disciplinary skill is something you learn at any age and with practise, you will get better.
• To develop understanding we need to use our knowledge and skills in different ways.

 The IPC Learning Goals

At the very heart of the IPC is a clarity about what the children should learn. There are Learning Goals for all subjects within the primary curriculum and beyond.

The IPC Learning Goals are vital as they:

• Help identify the knowledge, skills and understanding children should be learning;
• Help focus on the most appropriate teaching strategies;
• Help decide on the best sort of assessment to use.
• Are crossed referenced to National Curriculum statutory requirements.

The IPC Personal Learning Goals are an integral part of the curriculum. The 9 Personal Goals underpin those individual qualities and learning dispositions that children will find essential in the 21st century. At Boothferry, the Personal Goals are at the heart of our school – not just within the IPC.

The nine Personal Learning Goals are embedded within the whole of school life and children are encouraged to use the Personal Goals at home too! Opportunities to experience and practice these are built into the learning tasks within each unit of work, and during the tasks, teachers refer to the Personal Goals that are being taught and ways to develop them.  The Personal Goals are also celebrated during assemblies and then at the end of the academic year.

International Goals are a key focus of the IPC and international tasks are taught within each unit of work. This is to enable all of our children to develop a stronger awareness of the world in which they live. As a school we also explore perspectives of the ‘home’ country (UK) and ‘host’ country (countries around the world).

Curriculum impact:

The IPC has been designed to help teachers help children learn effectively and with enjoyment. However, it is not enough to assume that children are learning; we need some way of measuring their gains in learning. Staff use on-going assessment rubrics that assess key subjects in every unit of work.  These give an indication of the children’s level of ability (based on beginning, developing and mastering) as well as offering advice for further learning.  At Boothferry, the rubrics in school are used in a variety of ways: whole class, groups, individual. Rubrics should be visible on displays and in books.

• Each lesson begins with a ‘Do It Now’ task – the purpose if which is to recap prior learning and ensure children have the opportunity to retain knowledge.
• Teachers’ rubrics: these are essentially, success criteria. They help teachers observe and record the level at which children are learning in terms of ‘beginning’, ‘developing’ and ‘mastering’ (across the different mileposts).
• Children’s rubrics: child-friendly versions of the above, in age appropriate language, for children to use when self and peer-assessing.
• End of topic assessment: Each unit ends with an ‘end of topic’ mini assessment where children’s’ knowledge is tested in a low stakes quiz that is based on the substantive knowledge shown in the knowledge organizer.
• The formative assessment rubrics will lead to end of year summative assessments and end of year subject reviews that then inform the following year’s action plan.