Being the best version of you! 
At Cobden Primary School our overarching aim is to work in partnership with our whole school community: our parents and carers and the local community to support our children to be the best that they can be, in all that they do.

We aim to create an ethos which ensures a positive, respectful, inclusive and stimulating environment, which nurtures the wellbeing of all of our children towards reaching their full potential. We aim to ensure that the children have the knowledge, the skills and the confidence to approach and thrive in the world that we live.  

We have developed our approaches in the school to achieve this: we are continually developing our curriculum approaches on a shared understanding of what we want for our children and how we are going to achieve it.  

Curriculum rationale – knowledge, skills, interests and approaches.

We have carefully planned out curriculum through a blend of statutory requirements of the National Curriculum but also with themes and approaches to interest and challenge the children within our own local context at the school – to understand: who we are, where we all come from, and how we can be the best version of ourselves now and in the future.  

We deliver knowledge within our curriculum that: 

• Is progression-based both across  the year groups and across each year of study. 
• Is planned to be vocabulary-rich with opportunities to enhance, practice and develop language. 
• Provides a range of oracy opportunities to enable language development in practice. 

• Supports the children to learn and remember a range of knowledge and understanding in all areas of the curriculum to support their wider understanding of the world in subject specific areas connected both within topic overviews and also to prior learning.  
• Exposes children to a broad range of memorable experiences beyond the classroom, inspiring our pupils to build a wider cultural capital and support their learning.  
• Provides the opportunity for children to learn from and about other cultures, respect diversity, collaborate with one another and appreciate and celebrate our differences thus providing them with a strong moral compass.  
• Teaches children the importance of and the means to lead a healthy lifestyle.  
• Teaches children the value of making the right choices. 

We deliver skills within our curriculum that 

• Places the importance of reading at the heart of children’s learning. 
• Supports children to develop skills of evaluation, creativity, problem-solving and enquiry. 
• Develops children’s subject specific skills in each area of the broader curriculum through understanding, practice, evaluation and application of skills within a context. 
• Requires children to learn to work collaboratively and independently in order to achieve better outcomes.  

We teach and encourage approaches that: 

• Empower our children to become independent and resilient in their learning and beyond. 
• Ensure that our children are empowered to understand ways of recognising how to keep themselves safe. 
• Develop a thirst for knowledge and a love of learning and the desire and aspiration to strive for academic and personal success in their futures. 
• Enable children to develop a growth mindset so that they can become independent, reflective learners who have self-discipline.  

• Support children to have high aspirations for their futures in work and in wider life. 
• Develop children’s abilities to reflect and make choices and changes based on facts and past outcomes.  

Curriculum Intent:  

At Cobden we have developed a knowledge and skills led curriculum designed to give children a depth of learning and understanding that will give them a solid foundation that will enable them to become well-informed global citizens. Our core learning objectives and outcomes are derived from the National Curriculum. The approaches used in school are based around a Cobden ‘Learning Journey’ using principles from Barak Rosenshine’s ‘Principles of Learning’ to encourage recall and the making of links.

Each class has a long-term curriculum linked to four key themes of learning where being the best version of themselves is placed at the heart of their development. Learning is designed so that children will leave Cobden with a strong sense of:

• The community and locality where they live.
• Their place in the world on their way to global citizenship.
• Changes that have taken place in the past that directly affect and help to explain the world they live in today.
• The challenges they may face in the future and the skills and aspirations to be successful in a changing modern world. 

Reading and Phonics form the main focus of learning at Cobden and are taught as a priority focus. Maths and English are taught daily and, wherever possible, are linked to the four key themes. We have an interdisciplinary approach to learning as we know that our learners succeed when they can make connections across disciplines. Therefore, our long-term plans combine two or three focus subject areas per theme where children can make links in their learning across and within subjects, including: Religious Studies, Geography, Science, History, Computing, Art, Design and Technology, Personal, Social and Health Education, PE. In order to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum, understanding is enhanced by stand-alone learning in these subjects as well as others such as Modern Foreign Languages, thereby ensuring that the outcomes required by the National Curriculum are met.

In order to make further links in our learning we use 6 key drivers as themes for the understanding that we want our children to develop as being part of growing up as a global citizen: 
Equality

Healthy living

Technology

Sustainability

Civilisation

The rule of law

Curriculum Implementation:  

Each Learning Journey starts with an end! We begin by focusing on the key outcomes with regards to knowledge and skills in each journey. Children and their teachers discuss and plan lessons around the knowledge and skills that children will need to achieve the key learning outcomes. In order to achieve this, small-steps are planned for, so all children are able to make progress across all subject areas. The approaches allow children and teachers to carefully think about their start points and their current understanding to really broaden and deepen their learning outcomes for a purpose.

Approaches to teaching and learning:

The Learning Journey is supported by research-based approaches towards teaching and learning:

• Ensuring that children understand what it is that they are being taught,
• Providing opportunities to recall what they have been taught,
• Developing knowledge across a range of interrelated lessons,
• Developing skills progressively over short periods (within a year) and longer periods of time,
• Extending and reviewing skills purposefully across their time spent at Cobden to create a wider schema of understanding and remembering.

Further information:

If you would like any further information on the school curriculum, please let us know via the main school office on office@cobden.leics.sch.uk or on the telephone number 01509 263 485.