Birchwood Avenue Curriculum Statement

At Birchwood Avenue, we aim to encapsulate our ethos of ‘Educating Hearts and Minds’ in all that we do, to create pupils who are happy, work collaboratively and are well supported to reach their full potential. Our skills and knowledge-based curriculum is designed to ensure that we provide experiential learning, which broadens the horizons of our pupils and facilitates them all to become global citizens in an ever changing world. 

Our curriculum aims to provide inclusive opportunities for all pupils, regardless of need or background. Through the breadth of our curriculum programme, we inspire, engage and excite our learning community with a range of real life experiences that provide them with context to their learning. 

The ‘Birchwood Avenue Superpowers’ are central to us developing a set of transferable skills and values that pupils apply both in and out of their learning journey. Over time, these superpowers support pupils in becoming confident learners and, most importantly, equip them with the necessary skills to be lifelong learners. We ensure that our children are prepared to take an active role in modern British society and the changing world, as tomorrow’s leaders. 

We are ambitious for all children and the curriculum choices that we have made reflect this.  Our curriculum provision ensures children know more and remember more. To help us to secure this, we have reading at the heart of our provision. We use books to not only inspire our children, but to help our children gain a better insight into the world in which they live and are part of.  Using books to complement our curriculum, they allow better access to challenging concepts and theories across all subjects, as well as encouraging our children to develop and cultivate their own theories and queries – we want our children to be curious learners with educated hearts and minds. 

If you would like to find out more, or speak to someone about our curriculum, please contact the school and request to speak with Ms Swash, our Assistant Head and Curriculum lead.

Schemes to enhance the Birchwood Avenue Curriculum

To enable us to fulfil the National Curriculum requirements, as a school we have invested in the following schemes to help us tailor our curriculum to the needs of our community:

• English – HFL English Plans, CLPE and Literacy Shed Plus

• Maths – HFL Essential Maths, Mastering Number for Fluency and TT Rockstars for timestables.

• Science, Geography and History – Ark Mastery Curriculum

• PSHE - Jigsaw

• Computing – Teach Computing

• RE – Herts Syllabus, supported by Kapow

• Art & Design and Design & Technology - Kapow

• Spanish – iLanguages

Ofsted June 2023:

Leaders have ensured that the new curriculum is well sequenced for all subjects. Detailed plans support teachers in knowing what to teach and how to develop pupils’ learning over time. The ambition of the curriculum has raised the expectations of what pupils can achieve. Pupils are now learning and remembering much more than previously.