Our Curriculum

 Curriculum Intent

At Button Lane Primary School, we respect and value all pupils and are committed to ensuring that children have the best start to their education by teaching a curriculum that is rich and deep in knowledge and develops skills that supports pupils to develop a self-belief that will equip them for their future lives.

 Excellent pastoral provision underpins the success of our curriculum. Through a collective layered approach, it ensures that all children develop a strength of character and resilience to promote positive physical and mental health. We value the use of the outdoors in our curriculum to enrich and enhance learning experiences.

 Through a carefully planned and sequenced curriculum, we aim to broaden the children’s knowledge and experiences by opening up the world around them and helping them to realise the opportunities it holds. Our curriculum is driven by a mastery approach where we focus on children being able to retain information and make links across the curriculum. Children are encouraged to take pride in all that they do.

 Learning is deep and meaningful and empowers children to be confident and aspirational, whilst building their cultural capital. We expect pupils to always strive to be the best that they can be. Our curriculum is motivational and accessible to all, enabling children to learn, thrive and achieve in all areas of life.

 We celebrate and welcome equality within our school and our curriculum recognises that children are part of a local and a larger global community where they have a social responsibility to become good citizens in the world that they live in. Our pupils understand the rights they have as a child and will demonstrate empathy in supporting and respecting the rights of others. In turn, they are confident to express their own opinions to bring about a positive change in our community.

 Curriculum Implementation

Button Lane’s carefully crafted curriculum balances the national expectations and an all-encompassing range of experiences to allow our children to flourish. Our Golden Threads of RESPECT (Resilience, Empower, Self- Belief, Pride, Equality, Community and Thrive) run throughout our curriculum to help create a broad and balanced, ambitious curriculum, which helps our children to learn about the world around them. It is based on the National Curriculum but there are many other planned experiences that make up an inspiring wider curriculum that offers the children the opportunity to achieve success in varying areas. We love to involve learning both inside and outside, promoting the pupils social, moral, cultural and spiritual development. Clear strategic planning allows the curriculum to be dynamic and adapt to the context of the school and children’s needs.

Our curriculum has high expectations to combine transferable skills, demonstrate a breadth of vocabulary and develop strong cross-curricular links. Curriculum maps are produced for each year group to ensure clarity of coverage with a strong emphasis on progression of knowledge and skills. Learning is based on prior knowledge, whilst working towards clearly defined end points. This combined with carefully selected enrichment opportunities are key to our curriculum, to provide our pupils with rich experiences to enhance their learning.

Our curriculum design is based on cognitive based research and on-going assessment. We deliver a coherently planned, progressive curriculum to ensure key knowledge, skills and concepts are understood, revisited regularly with well-spaced reviews.

High expectations of progress applies to all children, those working above, at, or below age-related expectations, including those who have been identified as having special educational needs. Teaching and learning is characterised by ambitious objectives and early intervention to keep pupils on track, this is alongside rigorous assessment to monitor and maintain pupil progress.

Knowledge Organisers are used to provide transparency within the curriculum. They are used provide an overview of prior knowledge and to track knowledge, skills and understanding of concepts which are regularly re-visited in the form of a variety of retrieval activities to ensure learning is committed to the long-term memory.

Our curriculum extends beyond the academic, with an equal focus on personal development and citizenship. We provide plentiful opportunities to do this, such as; Pupil Parliament; Year 6 leadership responsibilities; Global Council, School Council, as well as other volunteering opportunities. We take great pride in our extensive pastoral support, and wider ranging extra-curricular enrichment opportunities.

 The effective teaching practices at Button Lane Primary School ensures that all staff expect everyone to succeed.

Curriculum Impact

The impact of our curriculum is measured in terms of the extent to which pupils have developed new knowledge, understanding and skills that they can use and recall with fluency:

We measure this through a variety of ways:

• Triangulation of a range of information. Senior, Middle and Subject leadership monitor individual subjects with Governors. This is completed through a range of mechanisms, reviewing learning, monitoring, evaluating pupil voice, looking at pupils books, parental feedback, Governor monitoring, providing individual feedback to move practice forward, celebrating positives and highlighting areas of development.
• Attainment and progress from National and Standardised tests and summative assessments across school combined with ongoing formative assessment. Pupil progress meetings ensure early intervention to close any gaps in learning.
•  Progress from start to end points and the knowledge and understanding the children retain over time, leading to the standards that the children achieve by the end of each year. This is measured through purposeful subject assessment through a variety of forms, tailored to each subject. (Knowledge Organiser assessment tasks, weekly and termly reviews, observation, pupil conversations, moderation, in school attainment tracking)
•  The quality of work, progression of skills, depth of knowledge and understanding presented in children’s books, displays and learning journeys
•  The development of character virtues, ensuring that children become flourishing global citizens of the future making a positive contribution to society.
•  Attendance data
•  Behaviour logs

Curriculum Overviews:

Our curriculum pages detail information about our school curriculum and include an overview for each year group. Further information about particular subject areas can be found by selecting the subject pages. If you require any further details about our school curriculum, please contact the school office who will forward your queries onto the relevant subject leader. 

If you require any further details about our school curriculum, please contact the school office using the contact details below, who will forward your queries onto the relevant subject leader or class teacher. 

You can also contact your child's class teacher using the year group email addresses: year...@buttonlane.manchester.sch.uk

Subject leaders are highlighted on each curriculum page.