Here at Horndean Infant School we believe that the curriculum should be rich and engaging, that it should be knowledge-led and that it should prepare our children for life. We aspire to our curriculum here being unique to us.
Curriculum Statement
Curriculum Intent: UNITED we learn
At Horndean Infant School, our knowledge led curriculum is designed to foster and develop key learning behaviours in our children. Our Horndean UNITED characters help with this:
UNIQUE USAIN – Usain likes to get creative. He enjoys following his interests.
NEVER GIVE UP NED – Ned likes to take risks and challenge himself. He is proud of his achievements when he overcomes tricky learning.
INDEPENDENT ISAAC – Isaac enjoys applying himself on his own.. He likes to try an activity first before asking for help.
TEAMWORK TILLY – Tilly likes to help her friends with their learning. She knows that working with others helps her understand tasks better. Tilly knows that tidying the classroom and completing tasks is much quicker when working together with others.
ENGAGED ERICA – Erica is always ready to learn. She is confident to give new learning a go and enjoys exploring the learning opportunities within her classroom.
DEPENDABLE DEBBIE – Debbie can be relied upon to make the right choices and help others in need. She always keeps to the school behaviour code.
Our curriculum enables our children to demonstrate these key learning behaviours in every lesson and are a key part of our school ethos. We want to develop children that are able to meet the challenges of all aspects of school life and who are equipped with the knowledge and personal qualities needed for the next steps in their academic journey.
At Horndean Infant School we follow a knowledge-led curriculum, underpinned by metacognition and self-regulated learning strategies, developed through quality first teaching.
HIS 50 'Fifty things to do before you leave Year Two'
The development of our ‘HIS 50’ ensures that our curriculum is packed with rich experiences for our pupils to enjoy. The document below outlines how these will be spread across your child’s time at our school.
Curriculum Implementation: What is a knowledge-led curriculum?
Skills and understanding are forms of knowledge. A knowledge rich approach is one in which our curriculum subject leaders are clear on the invaluable knowledge they want the children to do, know and remember (DKR). Knowledge is taught to be remembered.
We are all empowered through knowing things and this cannot be left to chance. We believe that children should be immersed in a rich knowledge-led curriculum that engages the children, is a first-hand experience and is linked to their interests.
Knowledge is taught to be remembered
Our units of work are supported by, ‘Do, Know and Remember’ (DKR) overviews that detail what the children already know, what they will need to know in the new unit of work, key vocabulary, what comes next and how this fits into the world of work to contextualise each individual subject. These are carefully supported by a set of metacognition and self-regulation prompts developed to support the children’s understanding of how they learn, remember and retrieve information.
