Milton Hall launched its new curriculum in September 2023 and continually review and refine what we teach.

In all subjects we ensure there is a progressive and considered development of skills and knowledge.  We recognise that each subject is different, and will have its own set of skills and knowledge that children need to work on to be successful in that area.  Please see our curriculum policy and curriculum maps for more detail.

Below you will find links to the individual subjects to find out more about the long term plans and skills and knowledge progression.

Some key points taken from policy:

The Milton Hall curriculum encompasses our school motto…

Dream It, Believe It, Achieve It

The Milton Hall Curriculum is driven by the need to prepare our children for lifelong learning and develop the ability to make informed decisions.  We offer a vibrant curriculum rich in experiences which is ambitious for all learners.  Through our curriculum, we develop essential skills, knowledge and understanding within subjects alongside skills and behaviours for learning which are the building blocks for later life.

Our curriculum encompasses the formal requirements of the National Curriculum (2014) and offers enrichment activities and experiences that go beyond the classroom to ensure children are exposed to the most varied and engaging opportunities that we can provide and build on their cultural capital.

At Milton Hall, we have incorporated and enhanced the use of Media and ICT in order to help facilitate engaging, exciting and relevant activities and experiences for all children.

Our curriculum aims to develop reasoned thinking and children are taught to use what they have learned to answer questions, explain ideas and opinions and formulate further questions.

Our children should be reading confidently by the age of 6 so that they can access a rich curriculum. We aim to broaden the vocabulary of our children across the curriculum with identified key vocabulary taught within each learning challenge.

Our curriculum promotes a sense of community, helps our children develop happy healthy relationships and ensures children know how to lead a safe and healthy life.

Through our curriculum, we work to build strong parental partnerships which empower parents to support their child’s learning at home. We aim to nurture aspirations and encourage all our children to dream believe and achieve. 

The aims of our curriculum are:

• To develop excellent behaviours for lifelong learning
• To encourage children to be curious, ask questions and seek answers
• To enable children to be confident to take risks and make mistakes
• To ensure children know how to look after themselves mentally and physically
• To encourage children to aspire and work hard to be the best that they can be
• To enable children to use and make links between new and prior knowledge to answer questions and form opinions
• For children to have fun and celebrate successes

These curriculum aims are underpinned by our school values that were introduced during 2023.

The Milton Hall Sparks:

S – Strive – Our children have high aspirations and goals and understand that these can be achieved through hard work and a determination to achieve excellence.

P- Persistence – Children relentlessly pursue their academic and personal goals, they face set-backs with positivity and determination.

A –Achieve – We want all our students to make outstanding progress, both academically and personally, from their starting points.  We will provide a broad and ambitious curriculum with enriching experiences that help open children’s eyes to the possibilities for their future, and explore essential skills to succeed in the wider world.

R – Reflectiveness - We value reflection as a way to bring about improvement. We think about the steps we have taken to see how we can improve next time.

K – Kindness -Our children treat the school, themselves and others with respect and dignity. They are generous and value their relationships with peers and teachers alike.

S - Supportive – We aim to support the personal, social and spiritual development of every pupil.  We value the role we have within our wider community.

Organisation and planning:

The curriculum at Milton Hall has been selected and designed using evidence informed approaches.  Knowledge and skills are built upon year by year between a range of topics to enable pupils to ‘know more and remember more’ (Ofsted Inspecting the Curriculum May 2019).  We believe our curriculum should offer a balance between substantive and disciplinary knowledge; facts are important and have their place within a curriculum, but so too does the information surrounding that fact.  Knowing this enables children to make links and gives meaning to the learning (Christine Counsell, Taking Curriculum Seriously September 2018).  We have also utilised Clare Sealy’s notion of a 3D curriculum, creating vertical, horizontal and diagonal links across year groups and subjects so that knowledge is reinforced and revisited in different subjects and subsequent years. This frequent revisiting increases the chance of transferring new information into long term memory (Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve). 

• Horizontal links- knowledge/skills secured using cross-curricular links within the same year of teaching
• Vertical links – knowledge/skills link are revisited and built within the subject over time
• Diagonal links – knowledge/skills are built upon throughout pupils’ time at school throughout a range of subjects

In September 2023, a newly planned and developed curriculum was launched in order to ensure a more progressive and sequential learning journey.  Vocabulary is a key driver, and this is also planned for teaching within the subject.

We have used the Learning Challenge curriculum as a starting point for designing the curriculum content, choosing one key concept to focus on throughout each unit (typically one unit is taught each half term but there are some longer and shorter ones).  This allows pupils to look in-depth into topics and make meaningful links between some subjects where relevant.  To ensure all pupils are successful the curriculum has been planned and organised into a progressive, sequenced model from EYFS to year 6. 

Topics are introduced and children reflect on the knowledge they already have in this area and what they might want to find out.  Teachers plan curriculum lessons using the skills and knowledge progression grids.  Teachers may then build in the children’s questions into their planning as way to extend knowledge and interest where possible in additional to the core skills and knowledge for that unit.  Pupil’s will be regularly given topic recall activities that help promote remembering and building of schemata to reinforce learning.

Some subjects such as PHSE, MFL, RE and some areas of science, have topic areas that do not fit into the topic questions used, so to provide full curriculum these may be taught as a discrete subject.

All subjects will have a policy in place for November 2023 reflecting the new subject curriculum, which outline in more detail how subjects are planned and delivered.  In addition to this there are also policies on PHSE that include RSE.

Definitions:

Substantive knowledge:  the specific, factual content for the subjects, which must be connected into a careful sequence.

Disciplinary knowledge: (Also known as procedural knowledge) how we gain substantive knowledge.  This can be quite subject specific such as understanding bias in history, or reading music to play instruments in music.

Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development:

We want our curriculum to help our students to become effective citizens in modern Britain.  We strive to this to be taught across the curriculum. 

British values:

Milton Hall is multicultural community of students where tolerance and mutual respect are promoted and encouraged.  British values are developed throughout our curriculum and enrichment opportunities and the following areas explored:

• Democracy
  • Develop an understanding of how citizens can influence decision-making through the democratic process
• Rule of law
  • Develop an appreciation that living under the rule of law protects individuals and is essential for their wellbeing and safety
• Individual liberty
  • Develop an understanding that the freedom to choose and hold other faiths and beliefs is protected by law
• Mutual tolerance and respect
  • Develop an acceptance that other people having different faiths or beliefs (or none) should be accepted and tolerated and should not be subject to prejudice or discrimination.