Curriculum Intent
At Hannah More we offer an ambitious PSHE curriculum that equips all children with the knowledge and skills they need for understanding themselves and the world around them. Our curriculum has been created using not only the recommendations of the PSHE Association, but also taking into account the specific needs of our wider community. The content has been selected in consultation with the whole staff team to ensure that we address the gaps in skills and understanding that have been observed on a daily basis.
Our tailored curriculum has been written with the community at its heart and embraces the diversity of our school population. By incorporating an oracy outcome in every lesson, we embed speaking and listening skills, which prepares all children to be confident communicators in a range of situations. Cultural capital is built by providing the children with age-appropriate information about the world around them in order to successfully navigate their way independently. The oracy and discussion outcomes allow the children the chance to share their own experiences and views as well as accommodating those of others.
Implementation
When we designed, mapped out and created our bespoke PSHE curriculum named Skills for Life, we used the objectives from the PSHE Association for the basis of our curriculum. Alongside the use of the PSHE Association, the curriculum was also crafted using a whole staff collaborative approach. Through staff training opportunities, all staff including senior leaders, subject leaders, teachers, teaching assistants and the wider staff worked together to collate stimuli and discussion topics in order to meet the needs of our children and community using the six themes. Each scenario and discussion has been designed to be relevant and relatable to the children’s real world contexts. Our bespoke curriculum provides children with an overall theme each term:
- Managing Emotions
- Communicating with Others
- Staying Safe and Healthy Online
- Building a Healthy Mind and Body
- Understanding Differences
- Exploring Money and Careers
Each term has a unit of six lessons. Each lesson has a fixed structure with an oral outcome and/or a personal reflection. Each lesson is taught by the class teacher and is compulsory for all children. The structure of each lesson is as follows:
- Starter game- mostly inspired and taken from JIGSAW content for social and emotional skills.
- A visual/audio/scenario-based stimuli for providing contextual inspiration.
- A structured discussion often based around the stimuli using our Voice 21 Oracy stem sentences.
- Written personal reflection in Skills for Life personal journals.
- After school parent feedback using the Marvellous Me app to encourage conversations around the themes at home.
Impact
The Skills For Life lessons at Hannah More provide the children with the opportunity to learn about, discuss and reflect on the personal, social, economic and health-related issues surrounding each termly theme:
- Managing Emotions
- Communicating with Others
- Staying Safe and Healthy Online
- Building a Healthy Mind and Body
- Understanding Differences
- Exploring Money and Careers
The bespoke curriculum uses the same themes across the year groups but has differentiated objectives and content that progresses through the year groups at an age appropriate level of content and discussion. This is to encourage children’s mastery in knowledge and awareness of each theme as they move from EYFS to Year 6. For example, within term 4’s theme: Building a Healthy Body and Mind, the first lesson for each year group is called ‘My amazing body and mind.’ Year 1’s learning objective is ‘I understand the human body can do amazing things and I need to take care of mine.’ Whereas the Year 6 objective for that lesson and term is ‘I understand how speaking a second language can improve my brain.’ This shows that as they move through the school, the children will be developing and building on their PSHE knowledge until they get to Year 6, where they would have encountered a wide variety of stimuli, information, discussions and reflections on all six themes.
The themes and the content within each one was carefully researched and planned with our children’s context at heart. The PSHE lead has ensured that relatable and accessible scenarios and contexts are used through the lessons to ensure that the children at Hannah More able to progress with their personal, social, economic and health-related understandings because it is relative to their context. This allows for them to connect with the content at a deeper level and provide them with a skillset that is appropriate for their future.
The impact of this bespoke curriculum is closely monitored by the PSHE lead and the deputy headteacher to ensure that necessary amendments are made to ensure that it is serving the best purpose it can. During every lesson, the teachers use assessment for learning strategies such as the oracy stem sentences (Voice 21) through questioning and discussions. Also, through the personal reflections made in the children’s Skill For Life journals. In the school year 2023-2024, the PSHE lead conducted a pupil voice before the bespoke Skills Fore Life curriculum was launched in early September and again in Term 6 at the end of the first year after all of the new content had been delivered.