Curriculum at GBJS

Together we learn; together we grow

“If you’re going to do something, I believe, you should do it well. You should sweat over it and make sure it’s strong and accurate and beautiful and you should be proud of it”
Ron Berger

At Great Bradfords Junior School, we provide a creative, engaging, inspirational and purposeful curriculum, designed with the ambition to give all learners: the knowledge, skills, confidence to succeed in life and an enthusiasm for learning, adjusting to meet the needs of every child.

Our curriculum is skills based and knowledge rich; we believe that our children should have the opportunity to study areas of the curriculum in greater depth. We want our children to produce excellent outcomes whilst developing their independence, creativity, enthusiasm and resilience. Through our projects, we aim to produce collaborators, innovators, leaders and, more than anything else young people who are kind, safe and responsible citizens.

‘’Excellence is not a skill; it's an attitude.’’ Ralph Marston

At the core of our curriculum, we strive to develop the ethic of excellence. We develop a Growth Mindset to help grow excellence for every child. Through our carefully planned projects, all children are assigned meaningful work that matters, and they study examples of excellence across a range of subject areas. The environment displays excellent outcomes, which have been created by providing the children with opportunities to produce multiple drafts, utilising the culture of critique. All of our projects provide purposeful outcomes or showcases for public presentation either within our school or the wider community.

To shift our children’s thinking, through our project-based curriculum, we drip-feed aspiration and opportunity from the moment they enter to the moment they leave.

Concepts:

Concepts give us the opportunity to create the togetherness amongst our community and connect our curriculum. The concepts lift us above the content of the project to a position where children can start to see things from a wider perspective. Along with this, concepts tap into personal learning and develop thinking skills. Developing ‘empathy’, discovering a ‘commitment to justice’ or enabling children to recognise that they can have an impact of their ‘environment and community’ does not solely happen by delivering the curriculum, but does happen when we filter the content through our concepts. Concepts allow for connections to be made across subjects across the school. For example, ‘democracy’ can be explored across many eras of history. We have been inspired by the work of Jonathan Lear in developing concepts within our curriculum.

The ‘Big’ Enquiry Question:

"The important thing is never to stop questioning." Albert Einstein

Every project begins with a question that frames the concepts and means that from the outset the children have a focus and purpose to their learning. Starting with a big question, engages the children and leads to more questions, which can be explored.  

Critique:

“I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better… a well thought out critique of whatever you’re doing is as valuable as gold.” Elon Musk

Critique drives excellence and steers the children towards high-quality, beautiful outcomes. When modelled and taught effectively, the power of critique embeds the ethic of excellence and embodies the school’s motto of: Together we learn; together we grow. We are passionate about supporting every child, and we support them to help one another to develop their ideas, minds, skills and first and foremost, to grow a passion for learning to enable all children to be the very best that they can be. 

We have three simple rules for critique:   Be kind; be helpful; be specific

Purposeful Learning and Public Presentation:

 “Anytime you make the work public, set the bar high, and are transparent about the steps to make a high-quality product, kids will deliver.” Ron Berger

We believe that we cannot expect children to produce incredible work if it will only get stuck in a book. Having a purpose is a key motivating factor in a project; the outcome must matter.

This could be:

• an answer to a question

• a completed challenge

• a solution to a problem

• a discussion of an ethical issue

• a final product

 

We create exhibits of the child’s learning and opportunities for experts and members of the local community to engage with the outcomes. We, of course, provide opportunities for parental engagement, but we also aim to engage a critical audience, and the knowledge that the children’s learning is ‘out there’ in the real world inspires and motivates them. 

Our curriculum enables every child to: learn together, grow together and, most importantly, achieve together!