Curriculum

“Understanding People”

At Bridgelea school we want to help our children, families, and communities to understand themselves and others more. Bridgelea is a National Nurturing School accredited by Nurture UK. At Bridgelea we believe that children learn and develop at different ages and stages, and this is reflected in our curriculum and nurturing approaches. Teaching and learning reflect how nurture underpins the curriculum and staff seek opportunities to work with children at their development stage.

Our Rights Respecting Gold Accreditation is embedded throughout our school. We value working with our families and community to improve our children's access to activities and involve everyone in their child's education. We provide an enriching diverse curriculum that develops Global Citizens. We use assemblies, theme weeks, and a variety of visits and visitors to support this curriculum offer. Through the Article 12 Squad, all children can express their views and be heard. Classroom charters, devised by the pupils, explain the articles the children are working on that term. The school is explicitly embedding the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in its policy, practice, and culture. 

Bridgelea is a Elklan Language Friendly setting. At Bridgelea we understand that good literacy skills provide our pupils with the building blocks not just for academic success, but for fulfilling careers and rewarding lives. Staff are trained in ELKLAN approaches and use this to understand the communication needs of the pupils. Staff develop the use of visuals, support increased processing time and create scripts to enable children to be successful in their development.

Language is a vital means of communication and staff are attuned to children to support and challenge unhelpful and negative beliefs about themselves and build resilience. In September 2022 we started the Skills Builder Accelerator Program to develop and implement a complete strategy for teaching essential skills aligning Manchester’s Skills for Life.  The progression framework we use breaks down the essential skills into steps: a sequential series of capabilities. There are structured opportunities throughout the curriculum to check understanding, apply skill steps and recall previous learning.

At Bridgelea we are developing a whole school culture of metacognition where teachers nurture metacognitive and self-reflective learners.

All staff are Team Teach trained and we have three in-house tutors who support staff to consider how we might understand and respond to children’s challenging behaviour. Team Teach approaches emphasize team building, personal safety, communication, and verbal and non-verbal de-escalation techniques for dealing with challenging behaviour, reducing the need for restrictive practice. Staff are also taught positive handling techniques to reduce risk, resolve conflicts in ways that are safe, and provide opportunities for repair and reflection for everyone involved. 

At Bridgelea we understand that parents are partners in their children's learning. Parents and carers benefit from being involved and welcomed at Bridgelea, sharing and celebrating the improvement in the children’s learning, behaviour, confidence, and attendance.

Bridgelea Values and Nurturing Principles

Communication

We seek to understand each other better through clear and effective communication.

Well-being

Being inclusive is intrinsic in our approach with learners, staff, parents, and governors.

Nurture

We seek to ensure our learners and staff feel safe and supported in every aspect of their lives.

Resilience

We want to equip our children with the knowledge and skills to independently sustain their choices.

Aspiration

We have the highest aspirations for our learners and staff and will stop at nothing to deliver it.

NP: Language is a vital means of communication.

NP: All behaviour is communication.

NP: The importance of nurture for the development of wellbeing.

NP: The classroom offers a safe base.

NP: The Importance of transition in children’s lives.

NP: Children's learning is understood developmentally.

At Bridgelea we believe that the children learn and develop at different ages and stages, and this is reflected in our curriculum and nurturing approaches. Teaching and learning reflect how nurture underpins the curriculum and staff seek opportunities to work with children at their development stage. At Bridgelea we strive for pupils to fulfill their potential and want our children to have high aspirations for their future.

Through our curriculum we empower pupils, equipping them with ‘Skills for Life’ and emotional resilience to thrive in an uncertain world and protect and safeguard them from exploitation and unnecessary risk. Through our curriculum we bring hope and real opportunities for our children to aspire, to be safe, and have the resilience to be successful and remain in education, training, and employment, progressing towards social and economic independence and building a better future for themselves, their families and the Manchester community of which they are an integral part.

At Bridgelea we aim to embed the Manchester Skills for Life throughout the curriculum

The five key skills are:

Communication
Problem-Solving
Self-belief (inc positive outlook, resilience, and motivation)
Self-management (inc accountability, organisation, and initiative)
Teamwork (inc leadership)

Research has shown that building these essential skills can support the emotional well-being and academic success of children and young people, as well as prepare them for life beyond school.

At Bridgelea we understand that good literacy skills provide our pupils with the building blocks not just for academic success, but for fulfilling careers and rewarding lives. A disadvantaged child in England is still more than twice as likely as their classmates from more advantaged homes to leave primary school without reaching the expected levels in reading and writing. The English curriculum encourages the foundations of early reading and writing skills, in an age-appropriate accessible manner. The use of quality texts, opportunities to develop oracy, and speaking and listening skills underpin our approach to literacy. Staff are trained in ELKLAN approaches and use this to understand the communication needs of the pupils. Staff develop the use of visuals, support increased processing time and create scripts to enable children to be successful in their development. Language is a vital means of communication and staff are attuned to children to support and challenge unhelpful and negative beliefs about themselves and build resilience.

At Bridgelea we want to equip them with not only the minimum statutory requirements of the National Curriculum but to prepare them for the opportunities, responsibilities, and experiences of later life. We want our children to use the vibrancy of Manchester to learn from other cultures, respect diversity, cooperate with one another, and appreciate what they have. We achieve this by providing a strong SMSC and PHSEC curriculum, with Rights Respecting, Nurture, British Values, and our core values placed at the heart of everything we do. We enrich their time in our school with memorable, unforgettable experiences and provide opportunities that are normally out of reach. We firmly believe that it is not just about what happens in the classroom, it is about the added value and essential knowledge we offer to really inspire our children and prepare them for their future success.

We are currently working towards a Thinking School Accreditation. We are working hard to embed a whole school approach resulting in a common language and framework which enables children to talk explicitly about thinking and to understand there are different kinds of thinking. We have introduced eight thinking maps which are used to help children organise their thinking, whether it be in story planning, classifying and sorting information, understanding relationships, or considering cause and effect. At Bridgelea we believe that you can increase the life chances of children by helping them build useful mental models. Creating persistent changes in their knowledge by harnessing and directing pupil thinking.

Implementation

Theory of Learning

While learning is hugely important, it is also vastly complex. Through our work on memory and metacognition, we are developing our curriculum and a shared language of learning. At Bridgelea we want our children to know more, do more, and remember more. Thinking is the process that precipitates such a change, a process involving our working memory. Many of the children at Bridgelea present with working memory deficits and it is crucial that we understand how this impacts children’s learning and how our curriculum and its implementation can limit the impact of these difficulties. Many of our children present with attention and concentration difficulties and this is also a key component of effective learning.

Learning Model(1).png

As a school we are exploring the ‘Theory of Learning – based in working memory – long term memory model’ and how an improved understanding of our children’s learning, using this model, can lead to improvements to our teaching approaches. This theory is underpinned by the following principles:

People can only attend to a limited number of stimuli at once.
Prior knowledge determines what students can learn.
Working memory capacity is limited.
Memory is a residue of thought.
Children may commit incomplete or incorrect ideas to their long-term memory.
Forgetting is inevitable.
Information can be stored in increasingly sophisticated mental models.

Our curriculum has been carefully built and the learning opportunities and assessment milestones for each phase are crafted to ensure progression and repetition in terms of embedding key learning, knowledge, and skills. Curriculum leaders have developed subject-specific overviews and rationales which underpin what we expect the children to learn, do and remember across the statutory curriculum. These overviews underpin all work in these subjects and form a focal point for display areas and provide a common subject-specific vocabulary for staff and pupils.

We empower our staff to organise their curriculum as they see fit to best suit the needs of the pupils in their care. They are best placed to make these judgments. Staff work within milepost teams to support this.

Mile Post 1: Year 1 and Year 2
Mile Post 2: Year 3 and Year 4
Mile Post 3: Year 5 and Year 6

Children and teachers have access to a variety of resources and schemes of work and teachers use these thoughtfully to ensure the learning taking place is progressive and challenging. The varied expertise and experience of class teachers and visiting specialists are drawn on to deliver high-quality learning experiences for the pupils. We have a specialist Music teacher, and our pupils enjoy showcasing and performing for friends and family regularly throughout the year. We have a specialist Art teacher, and our pupils enjoy creating and sharing their art with friends and family regularly throughout the year.

We have a developing digital curriculum and pupils make good use of technology across the curriculum. This has been further enhanced by our work with the DFE Demonstrator Programme and the implementation of Microsoft 365 and access to additional DFE laptops within the school.

Impact

We encourage learners to be involved in their learning experiences and to participate in decision-making across the school. We are an Elklan Language Friendly, Gold Rights Respecting, and Nationally accredited Nurturing school. Positive relationships are at the heart of everything we do in our school. Learners are encouraged to share their learning inside and outside of school in a variety of ways, building confidence in their ability to experience success with high aspirations and develop as confident individuals. Examples of this include:

Open afternoons
Achievements shared in assemblies
School concerts and Christmas shows
Stars of the week awards
Whole school displays
Competitions
Class blogs & Newsletters
The school website and Twitter feed
Progress meetings with teachers, pupils, and parents

Where there are barriers to children’s learning progress, be that educational or emotional, we use the wellbeing indicators (captured in PASS) and The Boxall Profile to assess the children and identify barriers to learning. We then look for ways to provide additional support. This may be differentiated work in class, a little extra support from a teacher, more challenging tasks, projects, or a referral to one of our partner agencies including Speech & Language Therapy, CAMHS and Educational Psychology. Working in partnership with parents and pupils is vital in ensuring we are meeting the needs of our pupils and families.

A variety of formative and summative assessment processes are used to determine progress. Assessment is seen as part of learning and teaching and there are high-quality interactions and feedback between pupils and teachers to promote thinking and demonstrate learning and development. We are developing the use of Classroom Monitor as a school.

At Bridgelea we aim to ensure that feedback is:

Manageable – the feedback process will not be effective if it is a burden to the teacher providing it.
Meaningful – feedback needs to be related to pupils’ learning outcomes and communicated in a way that they can access.
Motivating – any feedback given should have a positive impact on subsequent work

Assessment of a learner’s progress and achievement is based on a teacher’s professional judgment of their knowledge, understanding, and skills in curriculum areas. Teachers assess learning using a variety of approaches and use a wide range of evidence. Evidence of children and young people's progress and achievements will come from day-to-day learning and through the things they make, write, say, or do.

The assessment information is analysed by Curriculum Leads, the Senior Leaders, and Headteacher as part of our monitoring cycle. Pupil progress reviews are conducted termly, and subject reviews are completed half-termly with SLT to enhance curriculum development. This process provides the SLT and Governors with an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the quality of education at Bridgelea.

We set out our monitoring cycle at the beginning of each academic year. This identifies when monitoring for all classes is undertaken in all subject areas. Monitoring includes book scrutinies, lesson observations and/or learning walks, pupil/parent, and staff voice. All of this information is gathered and reviewed. It is used to inform further curriculum developments and provision is adapted accordingly.

How do we capture progress?

Bridgelea

Value

Communication

Having good communication skills.

We seek to understand each other better through clear and effective communication.

Well-being

Highly motivated children.

Being inclusive is intrinsic in our approach with learners, staff, parents, and governors.

Nurture

Having good self-control.

We seek to ensure our learners and staff feel safe and supported in every aspect of their lives.

Resilience

Having good coping skills.

We want to equip our children with the knowledge and skills to independently sustain their choices.

Aspiration

High self-efficacy.