Curriculum

History at Bramley Oak Academy

Intent

At Bramley Oak Academy, our history curriculum:

  • harnesses children’s natural curiosity in the world around them
  • fosters a love of learning through engaging and meaningful lessons
  • equips students with a chronological awareness of the past and how it has impacted the present day
  • prepares students to be well rounded world citizens who are culturally aware and able to think critically about world history

Implementation

At Bramley Oak Academy we teach the National Curriculum through a programme that is adapted to meet the needs of our learners. This includes:

  • Multisensory, immersive and practical learning experiences that are meaningful and contextual for students to ensure high levels of engagement and learning. This includes the use of resources, artefacts, historical sources, technology, the school grounds and trips into the local area and beyond.
  • Allowing students to access the lesson content and to show their learning in a range of ways in line with their EHCPs and Special Educational Needs.
  • The use of Rising Stars History to support progression of skills and knowledge across topics and year groups.
  • Teaching students how to ask and answer questions that encourage them to think critically about the history of their country and the wider world.
  • Continuously building on prior knowledge and utilising opportunities for retrieval and repetition.
  • Regular formative assessment which informs the direction of the learning.
  • Clear learning intentions taught in small, manageable steps to reduce cognitive overload.
  • Utilising the special interests of the students to increase engagement and desire to learn.
  • Teaching history half termly (alternating with geography) to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum.
  • Adaptations that take into consideration differing abilities in reading, writing and Maths and remove these as barriers.

Impact

The impact of our well adapted curriculum is that all students are able to make progress in history during their time at Bramley Oak Academy. Teachers feel confident and skilled at planning and delivering the content of the History National Curriculum, with the support of Rising Stars History, in a way that is well suited and adapted to our learners. Regular use of formative assessment and retrieval practice, means teachers are able to support pupils responsively and fill gaps in their knowledge, or to explore in further depth where appropriate, across all stages of the National Curriculum despite the chronological age of the learner.

Curriculum Intent

At Bramley Oak, we understand the importance Music can have in the personal development of our pupils. Music has a positive impact on children's mental well-being, and plays a vital role in the development of their minds and creativity which supports their academic achievements. Pupils who are happy and creative are better prepared to find success in their learning, whilst being able to concentrate better, explore and express ideas and be inquisitive learners.   

We encourage our pupils to be creative, explore new ideas, and develop the confidence to experiment using instruments and technology to inspire. We want music lessons at Bramley Oak to encourage our pupils to take risks, explore and experiment, and understand the process leading to a final product. We encourage curiosity and we utilise questioning in the journey to ultimately helping every pupil secure new understanding, vocabulary, skills and ideas.

Our music teachers from Surrey Arts have a coherently planned and sequenced curriculum adapted to the needs of every child at Bramley Oak, encompassing the child-centred learning approach that we strive for within our culture and curriculum. Music is taught as a discrete subject in half-termly sequences twice a year to each class. ​

Implementation

At Bramley, our Music curriculum is aligned with the KS1 and some elements of the KS2 National Curriculum and taught to ensure that they have opportunities to use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes through solfege and developing an understanding of the elements of pitch and rhythm. We enable the pupils to experiment with various instruments and Garageband to explore tuned and untuned instrumental sounds. They use these skills to combine sounds and explore music skills creatively through music composition and beat making. Our music teachers from Surrey Arts promote the subject's enjoyment by creating opportunities to build on learnt skills whilst drawing on various musical influences.

Musical vocabulary is a critical component of music lessons and is explored using instruments and musical pieces to secure understanding. We ensure all units are adapted to ensure pupils can access age-appropriate content regardless of their literacy levels to build and sustain high engagement and appropriate challenge of the subject content. These detail the critical learning and vocabulary pupils will need to support them in their acquisition of knowledge and act as a retrieval practice tool, which helps with independence.   

Impact

The impact of our curriculum leads to pupils being able to explore and express their ideas both practically and verbally. Pupils are involved in the evaluation, dialogue and decision-making about the quality of their compositions and the improvements they need to make, giving them both control and ownership over the final product. This supports them in making decisions and talking confidently about their learning journey, helping them develop more vital metacognitive skills. They will also build a more knowledgeable cultural capital as they learn about great musicians throughout time and their cultural impact. Formative assessment throughout the lesson means that teachers can support pupils and provide further challenges where appropriate and evaluation at the end of the learning.    

Intent

Computing at Bramley Oak Academy intends to develop inquisitive thinkers and problem solvers through the Purple Mash Curriculum. As pupils progress through the curriculum we support their development in understanding the advantages and disadvantages associated with online experiences, we want children to develop as respectful, responsible and confident users of technology, aware of measures that can be taken to keep themselves and others safe online.

Implementation

Our scheme of work for Computing is adapted from the ‘Purple Mash’ Curriculum and is broken into 3 strands: computer science, information technology and digital literacy. This allows pupils to explore coding, online safety, information technology including spreadsheets, word processing, modelling, animation, presenting, databases and graphing.

Computing is taught through the use of our iPads once a week and lessons are adapted, through formative assessment in the classroom, to ensure that all starting points enable pupils to access the curriculum. A key part of implementing our computing curriculum is to ensure that our pupils are safe online. As such we support this trough PSHE and assemblies.

Impact

Pupils at Bramley Oak Academy are able to use technology safely. They are able to explore and creatively develop their own ideas using a range of technologies and software and find solutions to digital problems. But most importantly pupils are able to see how technology and their safe use has a place in the digital world.