The Nanstallon model for subject level progression has 4 key elements:
End Points
What we are building towards as a school and in each subject discipline that we teach, so it is clear what our pupils need to know and be able to do at each stage in order to reach them. How each subject aligns to the 7 QI non-cognitive skills.
Big Ideas
Defining what the big ideas of each curriculum subject is. These are the anchors and key concepts of exploration of child-centred project learning.
Progression
The cumulative progression of skills, knowledge and understanding that children assimilate and accommodate. In other words:
- learning new things that relates to and enriches what children already know
- the accommodation of new learning in a different more challenging context so that children’s understanding becomes increasingly solid and nuanced
Matching outcomes to projects
The curriculum is designed so that key knowledge, skills and understanding are planned and taught in a progression considering the many cross curricular and subject links
Adults make sure that the work is interesting and captivating. Pupils are encouraged to think for themselves, develop their own interests and be responsible for their own work. They work well in class and when learning outside. They become particularly confident using information and communication technology (ICT) to record their work. (Ofsted, 2021)
A curriculum rooted in the locality of Nanstallon, Bodmin in Cornwall
It is important that the curriculum is rooted in our locality.
In Key Stage 2 children study World War 2; they learn about the lives of Cornish children and children that were evacuated to Cornwall. To support their understanding, the children travel on the Bodmin and Wenford steam railway as an evacuee experience.
As one the significant events after 1945, the children study Earth and Space linking the event of The Space Race to the timeline. Within easy reach of Bodmin, the Newquay Spaceport provides another experiential opportunity to support their acquisition of core knowledge.
Curriculum Strands
Our curriculum strands have been designed to show where there are common characteristics that exist across a group of subjects. Our Subject Leaders work within teams that align with these Strands, ensuring that the curriculum has a coherence that brings together 16 different subject disciplines in a way that helps our pupils to understand the relationships between the subjects, common thought processes that underpin them and enable them to make strong connections and develop sophisticated schema.
Curriculum Teams
We place Communication at the heart of our curriculum. It is essential that our pupils are able to articulate their thinking, imagination and ideas.
- They must have access to the technical vocabulary that underpins the skills they are developing;
- They must have access to the vocabulary relevant to learning, and;
- They must have the opportunity to develop their own rich and vibrant vocabulary.
Having a range of tools to communicate strengthens our ability to connect with other people.
Our unique selling point is the strength and cohesion of our teaching and learning team and the way in which our provision indoors and out enables children to learn collaboratively and independently enriching and enhancing their core knowledge through C.O.O.L time development.
C.O.O.L Time is a significant component of our Enhanced Curriculum and is essential to enabling the children to realise that their natural curiosity is a powerful tool in developing and growing their personal body of knowledge, concepts and skills.
Without C.O.O.L Time, the children would be restricted to a diet of learning that we have prepared. Whilst the diet would be healthy, balanced, and interesting, it would not take children’s personal taste into account.
C.O.O.L Time involves the pupils deciding to:
- continue their learning, deepening their knowledge and application of the core learning
- continue their learning, deepening and extending knowledge and learning from another piece of core learning
- choose their learning, building on their own curiosity as a result of something unrelated
- co-construct their learning with the teacher, building and deepening their knowledge and application of the core learning.
C.O.O.L Time is not just a classroom exercise. C.O.O.L Time can happen anywhere within our school environment. Where pupils want to use the outdoor environment to follow their interest and develop their knowledge and understanding, we would actively encourage this. Part of the success of our curriculum depends on empowering the pupils to make positive choices, and to respond well to the trust that we place in them to do so.