Topic is all of our work in History, Geography, Art and Design and Design Technology. Topics may include elements of two or more of the subjects. Please see our long term plans to see how this works. 

Intent

In designing the curriculum, we thought about what we want for our children and what we believe are effective methods of delivering it to them so that they learn and, more importantly, remember the learning.  

In order to help them remember what they have learnt, we are creating a curriculum that is experience rich. Examples of experiences may include trips, visitors to school or role playing a historical event such as a Viking trading market.  

Through our curriculum topics, we have three core aims: 

• To improve basic skills 

        Children should be given the opportunity to practise, apply and improve the skills they learn          in literacy and maths. 

• To make learning active 

        Children should have opportunities to get out of their seats and experience things as much          as possible. 

• To make learning creative  

        We want the children’s learning to be fun and experience rich. 

The knowledge we want our children to have is outlined in the Chris Quigley Milestones - please see the bottom of this page for an example. Links are made between current and previous learning by comparing an aspect they have learnt about before. For example the children may be learning about settlements in Viking times and will be asked to recall their learning about Anglo Saxon settlements. 

Implementation

Each term, we have a subject focus. In term one it is History, in term two, Geography and term 3, the Arts. There is a topic heading such as “Riotous Royalty”. In planning each topic, we try to make it relevant for the children. For example, as part of the our topic called "Pestilence and Plague", the children learn about the plague in Eyam. 

Teachers make explicit links to previous learning to enable children to understand where the new learning fits in with what they already know. 

Lessons also include retrieval activities such as quizzes which help teachers to be sure that children know more and remember more.  

Impact

We want our topics to leave our children interested and inspired so that they want to take their learning even further. We want to instill real enthusiasm for these subjects and through fun and interesting lessons, for our children to remember what they have been taught.