Between 2019 – 2020, Brookfield’s curriculum was completely redesigned by a team of teachers, governors, support staff and subject leaders. Their starting point was to create and deliver a curriculum that was a true vehicle for Brookfield’s vision of ‘Inspiring the best in everyone’. The Brookfield curriculum does not simply define what our children learn but also how they learn it and is underpinned by three key principles:
- Inspiring the best in everyone by creating equity for our most vulnerable children.
- Inspiring the best in everyone by building a deep learning journey as a community.
- Inspiring the best in everyone making learning relevant, responsive and purposeful.
Our curriculum map has been built with careful consideration of the learning journey we want a Brookfield child to experience as they move up through our school. A core part of each child’s learning journey is ensuring that they can make links between different elements of learning. This is facilitated through six themes which the children revisit: sustainability, innovation, equality, journeys, communication and home. These themes inform the angle through which different subjects are explored, allowing children to deepen and make connections within their understanding rather than superficially touching on many different elements. Many subjects have portfolios which the children take with them from Years 1 – 6 in which they record one meaningful outcome per unit which we call ‘Beautiful Work’. This is not necessarily work which looks pretty but rather it is work that children are invested in and proud of, often completed or built up to over several lessons. This helps them to see how their learning within a subject fits into a greater whole.
Units within individual subjects have been chosen to reflect our Brookfield community and input from charities such as ‘Lifting Limits’ and ‘The Black Curriculum’ have helped ensure that Brookfield children’s learning is enriched by diversity in the people, books and topics they study. Lessons are framed by ‘Learning Questions’ which encourage children to actively engage with what they are learning. Teachers plan a wide range of activities to help children answer the questions and begin new topics with specific lessons to teach bigger concepts, skills or knowledge which will ensure that all children have the best starting point to engage with subsequent lessons.
Our curriculum is not set in stone. Rather it is being reviewed, tweaked and improved as it responds to the needs of our children, new ideas and developments in education and new texts and resources.
In 2021-22, we will be developing a Brookfield oracy and language curriculum working with ‘Voice 21’. Ultimately, this will be embedded through every subject. It will aim to ensure a consistent and structured development of the excellent work begun in EYFS equipping every child with these vital skills with underlie their capacity to full participate, enjoy and succeed in every subject. Brookfield’s Early Years team have been working to redesign their curriculum in line with the changes to Early Years Foundation Stage from Autumn 2021. We will be adapting our curriculum map (see below) to reflect these changes over the course of the academic year.
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