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Thank you for giving us the opportunity to discuss the curriculum.

I think schemes have a huge value in schools, especially one as big as ours. It ensures consistency, something we desperately need. I think schemes for Reading, phonics and SPaG are necessary. I always check Twinkl before planning anything and I'm a big believer in not reinventing the wheel. There are so many resources out there to be utilised and adapted to meet the needs of our children and us as teachers.

I like the structure of Maths Mastery and planned something similar using White Rose before we started MM. The maths meetings are a great idea and I like the focus on vocabulary.  Unfortunately, I don't like MM, particularly the number work. I think it makes maths for young children much harder than it needs to be. I have never taught a MM lesson and thought wow that was good nor have I ever gone into a MM lesson feeling confident. Maths was my favourite subject to teach. I find the English Mastery to be quite boring. The texts seem unsuitable for young children and the constant stopping and check points are distracting. I find that using both these schemes has de-skilled me as a teacher and I lack the confidence and self belief I once had. I focus so much on getting through planning which makes little sense to me that I don't focus on what the children need or how I teach best.

We have changed the curriculum so many times when really we probably needed to just adapt the one we had. I fear we have lost skill progression and coverage. Lyn Tonks worked so hard for two years to ensure progression in art and all that knowledge, quality planning and hard work has been lost to Cornerstones. Our ICT facilities are seriously lacking and I doubt we could even teach the necessary skills with our equipment.

We make so many changes all the time rather than just focusing on one thing and making it right for us.

I recently went to visit another school within the Trust and looked at their planning. I said to the teacher, 'this just feels like Greenhill years ago'. She questioned why we changed it. I didn't have an answer.

The staff at Greenhill are amazing, we all want to get back to good for the children and for ourselves.

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When was the last time you did something for the first time?  

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When was the last time you did something for the first time?  

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I love a quote but this is what our curriculum at Greenhill should be an opportunity for the children to learn and try new things at every opportunity.

My view on the many schemes is that I find some of them very deskilling  and feel that I didn’t go into teaching to read or adapt someone else’s planning especially planning I feel I could do better my self. I don’t mind the structure of both Mastery Maths and English but don’t always agree with the content of either. Cornerstones for me has some okay ideas but until this year have never used a scheme for themes and have managed to teach creatively. I am a big believer in use what’s already there if it’s great but not if it just makes life easier.

I feel that lots of the wider curriculum is over looked and not given enough time yet these are the subjects the kids often most enjoy. Lack of resources and knowledge in ICT is an issue and something which could help improve the curriculum if done well as pupils and teachers can use ICT so creatively now.

I feel that consistency is a huge issue and we need to make sure that progression is seen in every subject throughout school so that children aren’t missing out on skills, knowledge and learning they should be getting . With curriculum being a central focus for Ofsted staff need a clear picture of what Greenhill’s curriculum is and ultimately what skills, experience and knowledge the children end up leaving school with because of what we have taught them.

We need stronger links in subjects, for example if your science fits into a maths lesson use your maths lesson, if your history into an English lesson use an English lesson and not to feel like you have to rush through things or teach something less passionately just because of timetables.

We need to use the expertise, passions and enthusiasms for particular subjects our staff have to our advantage and take the opportunity to utilise the national curriculum whilst using our own initiative and creativity. This is something I feel has been lost a little with all the schemes.

I also used to love starting a term with an exciting hook and making learning purposeful this got children engaged and interested in what they were going to be learning about and also what they wanted to know.

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Absolutely love Maths Meeting and Reciprocal Reading. Excellent daily exercises that are fast paced, engaging and relevant to all. The maths sessions reinforce and embed previous learning and the reading sessions, plug a gap we had in building comprehension skills.

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Practical activities : Science / Design & Technology

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Practical activities : Science / Design & Technology

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I’d like to see a return of more practical activities , particularly in science and design and technology.
Science lessons should be more experiment based, to excite the children and encourage/develop enquiring minds .
And I’d love to see the children having more time to design and make quality items , using a range of materials and mediums. I think these creative skills are more important than ever in these times of constant pressure to provide a balance and introduce children to practical, purposeful activities/ possible new hobbies. I know it’s very difficult to fit everything in but we do need to provide children with activities which enable them to unwind, preferably in the afternoons after they are being increasingly ‘stretched’ in the mornings.

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I've been reading over the holidays about the curriculum and how we need to be bold, take risks and be creative!
I would love to teach a curriculum that excites and engages the children, that is real and relevant for the work in which we live and sets them up ready for life. IT is weak as the kit is old and I am not confident in teaching lessons when the children know and can already do more than me!
Let's use this opportunity to be creative and do what's right for Greenhill. If we do we can hopefully make a difference for all our children and make the progress we know we need to make. Let's develop the creative, artistic, musical and sporting skills as much as the maths and literacy skills.

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I have mixed feelings about the schemes we are currently using for English and Maths. They do cut down on workload and the structure works for some children but i feel like it is de-skilling me as a teacher. Planning your own maths and English allows you to think carefully about the teaching sequence, needs of your children and the outcomes you want to achieve. It also means that you have a clear understanding of the national curriculum requirements for your year group.
In terms of the wider curriculum i believe it needs to be something that grabs the children's attention. Broadly speaking, our children have active and varied experiences outside school that we can tap into and build upon to really harness their enthusiasm and interest. Some of the resources we have build upon this, but others are stale. The opportunity to plan together as teams was a great platform for discussion where people often shared their passions for different things and i feel it was also supportive for less experienced members of staff as they could plan with more experienced colleagues.

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I loved teaching English using the Novel Study approach as advocated by Rosehill. I don't think that the English mastery materials are as good. There is less scope for paired or group work. More worrying is the fact that we are writing less than we used to. We used to produce a good quality piece of writing once a week; now it is once a fortnight. There have been suggestions to do more writing in theme and science. This is okay to some extent but does that then lessen the love of science and theme for the children?
I like Maths Mastery and have quickly adapted to it. I am concerned though about the recent St Thomas of Canterbury maths results. Weren't their results seen as well below average? It sometimes appears as if GDS children are not being stretched enough.
I am not sure about going back to the big question. I appreciate that it is good for children to be asked about what they would like to find out but we do still have to cover the National Curriculum.
When thinking about incorporating additional lessons within the curriculum please can you consider how this impacts on the timetable. Introducing PSHE for an hour a week is fine but this now impacts on RE. Year groups such as Y5 also have swimming to consider.

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The children in my class get really excited when we do topic work and absolutely thrive on History and geography and learning about the world. They ask lots of thoughtful questions and make links to their own interests. I think it would be great to choose a topic and before planning the separate lessons asking the children what they would like to know as i think this would create even more of a buzz. It also helps when our English planning is linked to our topic as we can harness their enthusiasm within their writing. I do like the structure of theEnglish mastery. One element on the timetable that gets them really excited is science, but i feel this has been overlooked. It would be nice to be able to do some WOW science with them and use this to help bring out the enquiry skills- whether it is linked to the topic or not!

One thing
that I think would really benefit the children would be to have to opportunity to plan some really exciting hooks for topics across
the curriculum and immerse them in the topic. (this does not have to be expensive trips but immersive experience, perhaps using drama or other creative avenues)

I have mixed feelings about maths mastery. I like the structure of the lessons, but sometimes if you are following the planning I feel like some of th activities and strategies don't help the children and some resources can be quite confusing for the children. It is also very time consuming to resource a lot of the lessons, to adapt or differentiate.

ICT is an issue as i feel I don't have the expertise to teach it as well as i would like and find some of the existing resources/programmes hard to use or outdated.

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In my year group we don't follow English mastery plans as they haven't been provided however we plan following the 6 part lesson structure which I like a lot. It helps to break down tasks. I like that the plan is also in line with maths mastery as it follows a structure and routine that children can understand. The expectation of children is clear throughout.

I love teaching maths mastery and feel like this has really improved my teaching practise. When I was new to a different year group it guided me with pitch, expectation and pace. It definitely takes some getting used to and I feel it needs to be given a chance as once it is understood it is easily adapted and used to meet the needs of your class. I think the benefits of this teaching and of maths meetings is evident in KS1.

I enjoy using the ideas from cornerstones for topics. I have been lucky to work on teams where, when people have a passion for something, they are able to add their expertise and plan accordingly. Cornerstones is just a bank of ideas and needs to be adapted and planned but I think the ideas are there are worth using.

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I'd be really keen to see the children asked about what they would like to learn so we can develop our own curriculum that's right for Greenhill children.
I would also like to see topics that are more relevant to our children and the world we live in today - such as How do we impact on climate change?,Too much plastic?  Our place in Europe etc.
We don't do enough IT either and given our children have these resources at home we need to address this. Some are more skilled that we are!

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I enjoy mastery English, as I feel that it is structured well, with having each unit heavily focused on a section of the story, which engages the children massively! Some of the independent tasks are a bit boring for the children, but I feel confident enough to create my own tasks, which still meet learning objectives! I feel that I need cpd in order to build my confidence in challenging the children, especially the higher ability children!

I enjoyed the way that we planned maths last year, including the fluency, reasoning and problem solving tasks, as I feel that I was able to differentiate for the children more easily, and this was more visual in books. I feel that teaching a 3 part lesson allowed more of a balance between me teaching and the children doing a task, but now I feel that the children are listening to me talk for longer, which means that they become disengaged in the learning. I also feel that some of the lessons that I have taught, haven't benefitted the children's learning. I think that the children would benefit from wave teaching, where some children begin on a task independently, whilst the teacher pitches the teaching at the other group, and then the groups swap over (it can also be done including three groups with a TA). This way the teaching is pitched at each group of children instead of the whole class.

I enjoy teaching using cornerstones, as I think that there have been some good activities and lessons! The children have been engaged in the topics, and they are inspired to go home and carry out their own research, and bring things in to share with the rest of the class!

I also feel that the children need more time to reflect on their own learning, in order to know how they are doing and what their next steps are. Maybe a column next to each objective on the success criteria could allow this?

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I really enjoy Maths and English mastery. I feel confident in adapting both of them. It would be nice if we were able to do our own year group's planning for English, but as there's a mixed class we can't do that. It's not a big problem, but it is a much bigger workload as often we have to plan the English Mastery from scratch and I sometimes worry I'm not planning it as well as English Mastery have done it.

I love Cornerstones. There are some boring topics, but most of them are exciting and engaging for the children. It's a shame that we can't do all the ideas given due to limited resources.

I feel that I don't engage enough with non-core subjects as there doesn't seem to be enough time in the timetable to get everything done. I don't even fit in two PE lessons a week, for various timetabling reasons.

I'd like some PD on computing. I have no idea what I'm doing with it and so will avoid teaching ICT due to lack of confidence (and timetable space).