Park Road Academy’s Curriculum Statement

Underpinning everything we do at Park Road Academy Primary School is the idea of maximising learning, love and enjoyment. The central aims of our curriculum will be high pupil standards, high equity and high enjoyment. We aim to offer an outstanding education for all children with our inclusive curriculum striving to overcome all barriers that prevent pupils from succeeding.

Our school curriculum will be enriched by the wide variety of after-school and lunchtime clubs on offer. We are committed to offering many high quality opportunities in sport, music and the creative arts, including dance and drama. 

At Park Road Academy Primary School, we aim to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, which encourages children to have a greater involvement in their learning. It requires deep thinking and encourages learners to work using a question as the starting point. Using the principles from The Learning Challenge Curriculum published by Clive Davies, teachers and learners use a prime learning challenge, expressed as a question, as the starting point to each cycle of learning. 

The unique learning themes involve learning in science, art, design technology, geography and history. We utilise the cultural and historical city of Manchester and the more local areas surrounding Timperley. Pupils will be given plenty of chances to visit places of interest as part of their learning experiences and visitors are welcomed in to share expertise, knowledge and experiences to help the children bring learning to life. All staff seek out relevant and meaningful opportunities to develop pupils’ social, moral, cultural and spiritual understanding when teaching across the curriculum.

Continuity and progression in the Learning Challenge Curriculum is built around a set of matrices which are broken down into year group expectations. The topics or Learning Challenges are set out in three-week units. In each subject the learning challenge starts with a main question, which is linked to an area of the National Curriculum. Effectively, science, history and geography are the topic’s drivers. That means that the main question is either a science, history or geography question. The main question is then supported by other subsidiary questions. In each case, one of these subsidiary questions has an art or design technology focus and this focus will link with the main theme. In other words, the learning challenge for rivers has a subsidiary question for art which focuses on landscape water colour work based on rivers. The art and design technology aspect are known as enhancers.

Our ‘Essential Knowledge, Skills and Understanding Organisers'  allow teachers and subject leads to guarantee that learners’ essential skills are being developed. The main idea is to use the knowledge, skills and understanding organisers for each topic to bring to the teacher’s attention to the level of work expected around each learning challenge. At Park Road Academy Primary, we allow our teachers to have a great deal of autonomy with their methodology and how they deliver their lessons. 

Within the Learning Challenge Curriculum, the final piece of learning is handed over for children to reflect. The idea is that learners present their learning back to their peers, making the most of their oracy and ICT skills to do so. Initially, learners may require a great deal of direction so the reflection time may need to be presented in the form of a question which helps them to review their work.  

English lessons at Park Road Academy Primary School link closely to the Learning Challenge Curriculum. Quality text links English with the driver; we ensure the focus is on the quality of the text rather than the fit to topic. Genres of writing are developed through each year group’s set of drivers. Year group progression maps provide clear and precise learning intentions and demonstrate a range of writing opportunities, ensuring that writing is produced for a breadth of purposes. Each teacher carefully considers the quality of work produced by learners in the core subject areas. Our schemes of work place an emphasis on using metacognitive style approaches as well as focusing on pupils progressively improving their knowledge of a variety of subjects.

Metacognition is not an instantly easy concept to understand, but when understood and actively used, is a hugely powerful vehicle for helping to unlock learning and progress.

At Park Road Academy Primary school we like to view it in its most simplest form which is:-

‘Thinking about your thinking’

We believe that Metacognition has two key elements:

• The awareness and recognition of how you are learning and progressing

• The ability to self-regulate your behaviour as a result of your awareness

What does this look like in everyday life?

     Clive Davies and Simon Camby 2017

• Drawing on prior learning to plan and prepare;

• Using appropriate experience to monitor their performance;

• Self-assessing and peer-assessing;

• Preparing for what is likely to be hard;

• Recalling similar challenges and applying successful strategies;

• Identifying new and novel solutions;

• Collaborating and identifying expertise;

• Offering and accepting feedback.

• Children will…

• Ask questions willingly

• Support one another

• Understand how they learn

• Work collaboratively

• Have positive learning behaviours

• Here at Park Road Academy Primary School we believe that we have the responsibility in developing both the academic and the character at the same time.

‘Character is the real foundation of all worthwhile success’

John Hays Hammond

We strive to develop the following skills across our curriculum.

• Communication                         

• Collaboration

• Exploration

• Examination

• Reflection

• Refining

• Rehearsing

• Remembering

• Invention

• Investigation

How we develop character across our curriculum can be broken up into six areas. These areas are taught and nurtured across all areas and ages. This takes us back to our original idea behind metacognition: -

Thinking about your thinking and learning to learn skills

Clive Davies and Simon Camby 2017