Intent

At Godolphin Junior Academy, we enable each and every child to explore, understand and appreciate the world around them by engaging them in high-quality literature from different times and places. Reading is at the very heart of our curriculum and our carefully selected class texts open the opportunities for children to travel the world, delve into historical past times, recognise the brilliance of scientists and explorers and analyse, question and compare political viewpoints. Through literature, we open our children’s mind’s eye so that they can almost live the experiences that they read about. Our wider curriculum is carefully linked to each class text and interweaves themes, concepts and topics within subjects and across year groups. Through these carefully-planned connections our pupils are able to acquire key knowledge to learn, make progress and lead as fully rounded, confident citizens.

We have exceptionally high standards at Godolphin; we expect our pupils to be polite and to work hard. This is especially evident in how our pupils conduct themselves and interact with their peers and members of the community and society. Godolphin pupils have impeccable manners and converse using eloquent and ambitious vocabulary. Our teachers set these high standards and role model this expectation at every moment and opportunity of the day. Every visitor that steps foot into our school always comments on how impressively polite our children are. We encourage visits to our school to experience just how friendly and socially adept our pupils are and to enjoy the infectious nature of our school. We believe, that this ability to socialise well with all members of the public is a key ingredient to the future success of our students.

We feel it is important for children to recognise how well they are doing in their learning and to work hard to excel. We are an inclusive school and have skilfully and thoughtfully created a culture of motivation in our school where healthy competition is encouraged and success at all levels is rewarded. ‘Godolphin Grows Success’ is our mantra which represents our desire to achieve, our thirst for knowledge and our high expectations for ourselves and others. The exceptional standards that we set and expect through ‘Godolphin Grows Success’ are present in every area of our imaginative and ambitious curriculum.

Implementation

Please look at the key documents listed below to see how our ambitious curriculum is organised and designed. You will find:

 - Our text-led curriculum topics

 - Our whole-school curriculum overviews

 - Our half-termly topic webs for each year group

The impact of our curriculum is to develop learners who are confident, socially adept and prepared for their next stage of education. Our learners are equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to continue to make good progress as well as contribute positively to society in modern day Britain.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through:

• Use of formative and summative assessments to assess the standards our pupils are meeting in their learning
• Measuring our 'knowledge seekers' task at the end of each half term to discover how much knowledge our pupils have acquired and applied
• Regular opportunities for pupil voice so that our pupils can articulate what they have learnt and what knowledge they have remembered over time
• Revisiting our curriculum vocabulary at the end of each half term to demonstrate how much new vocabulary was learnt and applied
• Celebrations of success to share and reward progress across a range of subjects