Intent 

At Cherry Tree Academy, we believe that children learn best through a broad and balanced curriculum. We will provide an interconnected and sequenced curriculum which allows children to connect their knowledge across subjects and link learning to over-arching themes and concepts. We will bring learning to life and foster curiosity through hands-on and memorable experiences building pupils' cultural capital.

Our ambitious knowledge-rich curriculum will develop our pupils' background knowledge, providing them with the skills, both declarative and procedural knowledge in order to help them shape the way they perceive the world. It will ensure that pupils understand, accept and celebrate differences including beliefs, cultures, ethnicities and disabilities. Our broad and balanced curriculum will also increase pupils' subject knowledge, vocabulary acquisition and understanding of healthy living, the environment, cultural understanding, respect of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law and therefore, prepare our children for life in modern Britain and as global citizens. We aim for children to see themselves reflected in our curriculum provision and to feel appropriately supported yet challenged.

Implementation 

Here at Cherry Tree Academy, we provide a broad and balanced curriculum based around the Cornerstones Curriculum, a nationally recognised approach for delivering outstanding learning opportunities for children.

What is the 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.

Each term, pupils are taught a main project with a history or geography focus, along with mini projects that cover the other foundation subjects (which have also been carefully mapped out in sequence). 

The Four Cornerstones approach 

Our theme-based curriculum is delivered through the Four Cornerstones approach - a distinct pedagogy that is based on four distinct stages and built on a variety of different aspects of educational and cognitive research. These stages are: Engage – Develop – Innovate – Express.

These four distinct stages give clear direction for both teaching and learning and centres on the belief that children learn better when their interests and fascinations are allowed to flourish. Children are encouraged to explore subjects in a variety of ways and using an integrated approach.

The Four Cornerstones of Learning link explicitly to pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development.

The focus for teaching and planning in each Cornerstone is as follows.

Engage is a short stage in which children take part in a memorable experience to stimulate their curiosity, ask questions and make links to their prior learning. It provides opportunity for cultural and real-world experiences and promotes discussion about the concepts introduced in each lesson or project. This stage also includes an introductory knowledge session where children are taught new or asked to recall prior knowledge.

• hooks learners in with a memorable experience
• set the scene and provide the context
• ask questions to provoke thought and interest
• use interesting starting points to spark children’s curiosity

Develop is a longer stage of learning, where children delve more deeply into the knowledge and skills required to understand and build their conceptual understanding. Learning is well-sequenced, interconnected.

• teach knowledge to provide depth of understanding
• demonstrate new skills and allow time for consolidation
• provide creative opportunities for making and doing
• deliver reading, writing and talk across the curriculum

The innovate stage provides crucial opportunities for children to retrieve previous knowledge and skills in order to apply them in new contexts.

• provide imaginative scenarios for creative thinking
• enable and assess the application of previously learned skills
• encourage enterprise and independent thinking
• work in groups and independently to solve problems

Express gives children a structured opportunity to reflect on their learning, test their knowledge and celebrate their achievements.

• encourage reflective talk by asking questions
• provide opportunities for shared evaluation
• celebrate success
• identify next steps for 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 takes a broad and balanced approach to the curriculum where knowledge and skills are intertwined and equally valued. The Cornerstones approach helps children to acquire the knowledge in order to learn ever more complex skills, and then gives them opportunities to practice and apply them over time, in order to master them. This includes regular knowledge retrieval and application and revisiting and refining skills. Both knowledge and skills, therefore, combine to enrich the learning experience.

The rationale behind knowledge-rich curricula is embedded in cognitive science which contests that having strong knowledge frees up the brain’s capacity for thinking (leading to increased creativity and innovation) and that new learning will be embedded more easily if it can be connected to what has already been learnt. There is also a strong focus on teaching subjects as discreet academic disciplines, direct instruction by the teacher, vocabulary acquisition, retrieval practice and the use of knowledge organisers.

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.

Big Ideas

We believe that children deserve a balanced curriculum that enables them to develop a deep understanding of all subjects and the interconnections between them. The rationale for the Cornerstones Curriculum takes the form of 10 big ideas that provide a purpose for the aspects, skills, knowledge and contexts chosen to form the substance of the curriculum. These big ideas form a series of multi-dimensional interconnected threads across the curriculum, allowing children to encounter and revisit their learning through a variety of subject lenses. Over time, these encounters help children to build conceptual frameworks that will enable a better understanding of increasingly sophisticated information and ideas.

General principles

Our curriculum will give children the opportunity to:

• develop a rich and deep subject knowledge of both declarative and procedural knowledge
• develop new skills through a variety of interesting contexts
• understand the purpose and value of their learning and see its relevance to their past, present and future
• extend pupils' vocabulary acquisition through exposure to a rich language environment of tiered vocabulary 

SMSC/FBV

Our curriculum will give children the opportunity to:

• Rule of law - Learn that all people and institutions are subject to and accountable for their actions and behaviour
• Tolerance and respect - To respect and tolerate the opinions or behaviour of others
• Individual liberty - Be free to express views or ideas
• Democracy - Be part of a system where everyone plays an equal part
• Cultural - Appreciate cultural influences; appreciate the role of Britain’s parliamentary system; participate in culture opportunities; understand, accept, respect and celebrate diversity
• Social - Use a range of social skills to participate in the local community and beyond; appreciate diverse viewpoints; participate, volunteer and cooperate; resolve conflict
• Moral - Recognise right and wrong and respect the law; understand consequences; investigate moral and ethical issues and offer reasoned views
• Spiritual - Explore beliefs, experience and faiths, feelings and values; enjoy learning about oneself, others and the surrounding world; use imagination and creativity and reflect on experiences

Well-being

Our curriculum will give children the opportunity to:

• follow their own interests and be themselves
• reflect and think mindfully about their learning
• build respectful friendships
• develop self-esteem and confidence in their abilities

Pupil voice

Our curriculum will give children the opportunity to:

• make a positive contribution to the school and local community
• take part in age-appropriate discussions
• express their opinions on a range of different topics and issues
• explore ways of becoming an active citizen

Pedagogy

Our curriculum will be taught through a pedagogy that:

• promotes innovation and entrepreneurialism
• excites, promotes and sustains children’s interest
• offers all children a memorable experience at the start of every topic
• enables and fosters children’s natural curiosity

Enrichment

We will enrich our curriculum by:

• holding specialist curriculum days or weeks
• developing partnerships with external providers that extend children’s opportunities for learning
• welcoming parents and carers to take part in children’s learning and experiences
• opportunities for children to learn outdoors

Impact

Overall, our children leave us well prepared for the next stage of their learning and life, having acquired both declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge (skills) in order to learn ever more complex skills. They have secured an understanding of the ‘10 Big Ideas’, applying subject specific vocabulary so that they are able to reason, think big, broaden their understanding of the world around them and their place in it as as ambitious, confident, empowered and resilient active global citizens.

• Cornerstones
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Knowledge Organisers

To further support our children’s developing subject knowledge, knowledge organisers form a central part in the implementation of our knowledge-rich curriculum within the classroom. Within lessons, pupils have access to these tools at all times to help them gain, retain and build the knowledge and skills. As a constant point of reference, we expect our children to use the knowledge organisers to support them in applying subject-specific vocabulary in their explanations. 

A knowledge organiser is a document, usually no more than two sides of A4, that contains key facts and information that children need to have a basic knowledge and understanding of a topic.

Our knowledge organisers will include:
•    the essential facts about the topic, usually laid out in easily digestible chunks
•    key vocabulary or technical terms and their meanings
•    images such as maps or diagrams
•    famous quotations, if relevant.

We all want children to gain specific knowledge in each curriculum subject that builds up over time. At Powers Hall Academy, knowledge organisers play a useful role here, as they focus on one subject or topic and grow in complexity across year groups. The main benefit of knowledge organisers is that they give our children and teachers the ‘bigger picture’ of a topic, subject area or specific concepts. Some topics can be complicated, so having the essential knowledge, clear diagrams, explanations and key terms on one document can be really helpful.

Another key benefit is their use for retrieval practice. Regular retrieval of knowledge helps us remember more effectively (Roediger et al, 2011). Again, it helps us store knowledge in, and recall it from, the long-term memory and frees up space in the working memory to take on new knowledge. Lessons always begin with a prior learning task, which helps to activate what pupils have previously learnt and prepare them for the new learning they will encounter. This retrieval practice is often done using knowledge organisers or multiple-choice quizzes.

Organisation of Cherry Tree Academy curriculum content based on the Cornerstones Curriculum 22

The structure of Curriculum 22 provides a robust framework on which to build deliverable content. The content is delivered through a range of broad and balanced, knowledge-rich projects. The knowledge and skills statements provide the foundation for, and are directly linked to, the sequential lesson plans and resources within each project. Each project follows the Cornerstones pedagogy of Engage, Develop, Innovate and Express.

The long-term plans below set out the projects for each year group and term. Projects are organised to maximise meaningful links between subjects, aspects and concepts.

Our subject leads:

English - Mrs L Harris

Phonics - Mrs Donnelly
Maths - Mr R Bullivant

Science - Miss Bassnett

Connected Curriculum - Mrs Helsden

For any further information on the curriculum the school is following, please contact the school.