We are very proud of our ambitious Abbey Hill Curriculum

An Ambitious Abbey Hill Curriculum:

There is no ceiling to what our AbbeyHillians can achieve as they grow and get better from where their learning journey begins.

The Abbey Hill Curriculum

The design of our curriculum

The Abbey Hill Primary Curriculum has been designed to support our pupils to learn through 4 key lenses: Power and Peace, Imagination and Innovation, What a Wonderful World and Equity and Diversity.

The 4 lenses reflect key priority foci for our catchment both in terms of the key knowledge and understanding we aspire to our pupils attaining but also in the concepts, skills, attitudes and experiences that are central to our ambitions for our pupils.

Our curriculum has been designed and developed through consultation with:

Our school community, including pupils

• Governors
• Teaching staff
• Curriculum Specialists including Transform Associate Headteachers
• LA Advisors
• CPD providers.

 

Through careful and rigorous consultation, analysis and evaluation, we have identified lenses which not only reflect what we wish for our pupils (our intent) but also shape the teaching and learning (our implementation and impact).

Therefore, when studying a particular Topic, a specific lens such as ‘Power and Peace’ is used. This provides a focus for the content including sticky knowledge (substantive) choices, intended teaching and learning, lesson design and intended impact for pupils.

The structure of our curriculum

The Abbey Hill Primary Curriculum follows a rolling-program due to the mixed-year group nature of our class structures. Our curriculum has been carefully planned to retain its progressive sequencing. Over the course of a rolling program, pupils continue to cover the full content of the national curriculum with breadth and balance. This will be reviewed in July 2025.

The Subjects of Art and Design draw content from other sources but outcomes align to the theme of the Topic. Our Science curriculum content is selected to nod, where appropriate, to themes covered within the Topic.

 

Rationale

Why have we chosen this approach?

Our lenses reflect our intent as a school. They enable us to focus in, very carefully, on the key takeaways we feel our pupils will most benefit from, in covering the National Curriculum (and beyond).

The lenses chosen reflect the school’s curriculum evaluation cycle and have grown organically. From the curriculum content and the successes we have seen our pupils achieve, the lenses reflect the overarching themes of the ‘topics’ children have learnt about. This includes taking on board pupil voice, retrieval but also what key knowledge we want our AbbeyHillians to know and retain.

Why have we chosen this content/these people?

All content has been primarily taken from the breadth of study from the National Curriculum. On some occasions, we reach beyond it.

Where choices can be made, they have been made based on our knowledge of our community and the needs of our pupils such as including Bess of Hardwick and Ada Lovelace, significant women and significant locally to our context.

The Golden Age of Islam provides an opportunity for us to broaden our celebration of diversity and has also been popular in pupil voice from previous year groups.

All choices made reflect our catchment, context and the feedback of our AbbeyHillians including school parliament and Governors.

To find our more information about our curriculum, beyond what is available on our website, please contact the school office via admin@abbeyhill.notts.sch.uk, call 01623484512 or visit the school office, indicating your desire to find out more about the curriculum we are following.