The NET Curriculum

Intent - Implementation - Impact

Intent

At NET we teach a curriculum that enables all pupils to achieve high educational outcomes, positive wellbeing and good physical development. We do this through:

Imparting high-level knowledge to the pupils through stimuli (including texts) that promote rich vocabulary.
Making transferrable links within, across and outside the curriculum.
An extensive Advanced Learning Events (enrichment) programme that combines physical development and positive wellbeing to enhance pupils’ self-identity, determination, confidence and resilience.

Through this the pupils will be equipped with knowledge and skills to become a life-long learner, engaging in multiple contexts and make choices as a global citizen:

Knowledge is encountered in specific units and continues to be reinforced in different contexts, over time and across the curriculum.
Skills are specific and split into domains (subject specific skills). We introduce these to the pupils as ‘What it means to be a …’.

Implementation

Structure

2 year rolling curriculum containing all unit titles and outcomes. These units are set as written schemas that comprise of identified transferrable links, including vocabulary, within and across subjects from this unit and others preceding it. We ask regularly… ‘What can we revisit and build on later and elsewhere?’

Weekly lesson plans (interactive) where appropriate pedagogy is decided upon to help pupils comprehend and apply the learning.

Vocabulary is not taught in a single context, instead combining all of its characteristics/particulars/ definitions to promote transferability.

Teaching and learning cycle (see right)

Teachers impart essential knowledge that has been planned progressively, through the NET curriculum, across EY and key stages one and two. This planned knowledge will include vocabulary and concepts. The concepts will build upon one another year after year and refer to one another over time. The knowledge will be mainly teacher led.

Once the essential knowledge has been facilitated, teachers will plan a creative question to explore or task to complete (using careful guidance from the NET curriculum). This will most likely be differentiated through SOLO Taxonomy, which is how much you draw upon other essential knowledge to gain an opinion or answer.

Well-planned outcome activities use Blooms Taxonomy higher order thinking skills to show pupils’ understanding of what they have learnt.

Subject specific pedagogy may be appropriate- this will be made explicit in the subject’s curriculum document.

Impact (Assessment and Review)

Annual teacher assessment will track pupils’ skill development as an expert in all subjects. They will use the domains as a framework to help them make a decision as to whether a pupil is showing that they are ‘on track’, a ‘target’ pupil or an ‘expert’ in the subject.

Online knowledge questioning will determine pupils’ ability to retain and transfer learnt knowledge. It will be set as low stakes as the pupils can retake to improve knowledge retention. High expectations will be present as the progress of knowledge retention of all pupils should be above expected. At the beginning of each unit, pupils undertake knowledge questioning in school (K of KWL grid). They are equipped with ‘fact files’ to use to support learning at home and school throughout the unit. The knowledge questioning can be retaken as many times as they wish. At the end of the unit pupils retake knowledge questioning in school (L of KWL grid).

Teachers regularly review the spectrum of the whole unit – including delivery, reception and quality to ensure the curriculum remains relevant and of a high quality.