Curriculum Principles
At Newstead Academy, our curriculum is designed to ensure that every child achieves their full potential through access to an ambitious, broad and carefully developed programme of learning. We are driven by our ethos of ambition without limits, reflected in a curriculum that is both structured through clear learning intentions and responsive to individual needs.
We have developed a bespoke, objective-led curriculum that uses the National Curriculum as a foundation. From this, we have created a pre-formal, semi-formal and formal model, enabling us to meet the diverse needs of our learners. Both substantive knowledge and disciplinary skills are embedded throughout, alongside a tiered approach to the teaching of vocabulary to support communication and understanding. Oracy is also woven through all subjects.
Independence and life skills underpin our curriculum, ensuring that pupils are well prepared for their next stage of education and beyond. We use Cornerstones as our curriculum planning tool to enhance the quality of provision, ensuring high outcomes and access to a rich bank of resources for teachers. Our decision to adopt Cornerstones is evidence-informed; we carefully evaluated a range of curriculum approaches to ensure alignment with the needs of our pupils.
Cornerstones supports us in delivering comprehensive curriculum coverage, promoting life skills development, and providing engaging, motivating learning experiences that inspire all children to succeed.
The curriculum at Newstead is not just the sequence of learning that we follow, it comprises of;
- The content and structure of the curriculum – what is taught, when and why. Our curriculum is progressive but is also designed as a spiral in order to facilitate regular retrieval and revisiting of key facts. The curriculum is structured around our ‘core concepts’ which are used to engage, inspire and motivate our children.
- Effective pedagogical delivery- our staff all understand what an effective model for learning is and how this may look for each individual child in our setting. This includes knowing the interests of our children and shaping delivery towards this.
- Understanding child development- we place a high emphasis on a clear and thorough understanding of what a child can do now, what they need in place to attempt next steps of learning and what next steps may look like, including what success looks like in this area. We constantly revisit each child’s current point and discuss as a team steps needed to move forwards.
- Assessment- linked to points above it is crucial that we have regular and accurate assessments of what a child can do so that no time is lost and no learning is missed. We are constantly striving for the next achievement point, the next step and the next marker of progress to ensure that our children are truly achieving.
- Environment- ensuring our environment supports our children and provides the learning experiences, and spaces that they require.
- Visits, visitors, and experiences – a key feature of our curriculum is the experience element of our work. We want to ensure that our children experience the full breadth of curriculum offer and engage in relevant and purposeful experiences with each topic they cover. This may be visitors to the setting, an experience that our staff provide or visits outside of the setting- linked to curriculum aims and themes.
Delivery
We deliver the curriculum at Newstead by following our long term Road Maps for each subject. Teachers also use the themes contained in the Cornerstones units to enhance the offer. We match the teaching to the knowledge, skills and understanding of each class. Our classes are organised based on need of the children rather than chronological age to ensure that we have a clear and accurate fit. Using this model, subject leaders and class teachers plan for Explorers, Discoverers and Adventurers.
Explorers (pre-formal) – pupils with complex needs, including those who are pre-verbal. For many, this may be their first experience of a learning setting. Learning objectives are shaped using EYFS guidance alongside the Engagement Model.
Discoverers (semi-formal) – pupils who may have had previous learning experiences at Newstead, Waterton Assessment Centre or another educational setting. Learning objectives are informed by EYFS guidance, with progression towards aspects of Year 1 National Curriculum, alongside the Engagement Model.
Adventurers (formal) – pupils working towards KS1 and KS2 expectations. This is the broadest group in terms of learning objectives. Some pupils may require individualised or project-based learning to supplement whole-class teaching.
Our teachers use Cornerstones resources, lesson units and plans as a base and then adapt the lesson, and delivery of this lesson to meet the individual and group needs of their classes. This ensures that cycles of learning are planned to ensure progression but the design of this allows us to create personalised learning for our children.
A key consideration that we take into account is to ensure that our staff know our children well. This ensures that the curriculum for the class, and individual children is tailored towards their expressed need rather than the inferred need. We do not assume what we think we know, we always ensure that our work is pitched accurately through regular assessment to ensure next steps are accurate and that our lesson delivery is responsive to our children and the exact point in time learning.
Our curriculum needs to have ‘flex’ in it, it is an umbrella structure with the children as the starting point and staff need to make confident decisions about the developmental hierarchies that we want to follow- linked to a thorough understanding of child development. The pace is determined by child’s needs but there is a shared understanding that time is not wasted. This is a careful balance and relies on a clear understanding of our children as individuals and the point in time that they are accessing aswell as the shared goal and end point.
We describe this approach as a spiral of inquiry which resembles specific modelling of the graduated approach incorporating adaptive teaching and an adaptive curriculum. Our teachers need to be forensic in their approach to assessment in order to inform flexible teaching and learning. A key factor in this is noticing what our children are learning, how they are responding and how engaged they are in order to shape effective teaching and learning experiences.
Through these approaches we aim to make the knowledge accessible- our staff know our children, they know the subject well and their role is to bring this alive to our children, make it accessible in order to make it achievable. We ensure that presence in the moment is valued and that our staff meet need at the point of that need, not where they think it should be. This is a specific approach and one that requires all staff to be absorbed in their tasks and activities with a child to fully understand the learning that is taking place.
Individualised pathways
In addition to the curriculum detailed above, each child has an individual curriculum that is based on their EHCP and outcomes identified within this. As EHCPs are individual to each child some of the activities that are planned around the outcomes are personalised and delivered on a one to one basis. There are some activities that children complete in small groups but this is always led by the provision needed and outcomes. This ensures that on a daily basis children are accessing activities that are tailored to their individual provision ensuring progress towards agreed outcomes.
Reading Curriculum at Newstead
At Newstead Academy we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We teach phonics throughout Newstead Academy and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. We follow the SEND strand of Little Wandle which has a key focus on appropriate pace and delivery for our pupils. Our pupils may take longer to work through the programme but our aim for all our pupils is to complete the Little Wandle programme.
Oracy at Newstead
Oracy is articulating ideas, developing understanding and engaging with others through speaking, listening and communication. At Newstead, our oracy progression guidance is designed to ensure that every pupil, develops confidence, competence, and enjoyment in communication. Oracy is now recognised as a fundamental skill for learning, social interaction, and lifelong participation and at Newstead we believe that every pupil has the skills, confidence, and support to find and use their voice in school and beyond.
We believe that all communication forms are valued, including speech, AAC, Makaton, symbols, gesture, and writing. Progress may be non-linear and personalised to each child. Oracy is a core entitlement, not an optional enhancement.
Grounded in cross-curricular learning, with the aim to embed oracy objectives and opportunities into all subjects, and promote life skill development, the program supports communication, emotional expression, social interaction, and cognitive growth. The progression guidance ensures every pupil is challenged and celebrated, regardless of starting point. Sessions and activities are scaffolded to meet individual communication needs. Teachers use a range of supports and a total communication approach (visuals, gestures, AAC, symbol cards) to enhance understanding and expression. Real-life contexts and cross-curricular links provide purposeful opportunities to practise oracy.
We also use Chatta to enhance our school offer. Chatta is a simple classroom approach that uses images and talk to help pupils think, understand , remember, write and communicate. Teaching with Chatta’s interactive audio-visual storyboards allows teachers to break content into smaller, manageable chunks and aim high with vocabulary use and modelled language, providing countless opportunities for oral composition for any outcome, subject and age group. Chatta is an effective and inclusive educational approach that builds confident communication skills, and strengthens written composition, fluency and stamina. Teachers model ideas step-by-step. Pupils process, organise and express learning more easily. Chatta breaks learning into manageable chunks using visual prompts and live modelling to support every learner.
Subjects On A Page (SOAP)
Subject Leadership across Newstead is a key focus area for the School. Subject Leaders are currently developing their subject knowledge and skills so that this can then cascade to staff facilitating the learning in each of our hives at both Newstead and Newstead Hunningley. Our Subject On A Page (SOAP) documents are the starting point for us as we develop and enhance our current curriculum offer.