Core Characteristics

Through our curriculum, we aim to educate the whole child, building character and knowledge together. In order to promote this, we have identified four key characteristics that we aim to nurture within our children. Everything we do will promote the development of these core qualities which we feel are central to ensuring our children develop into well rounded, well-educated young people who are prepared for success in their next phase of education. We seek to develop lifelong learners who are given genuine opportunities to apply their learning. Hopefully this means that pupils leave us with the character and dispositions to succeed in a range of situations.

Our key characteristics and for learning and the curriculum are:

1. The Moral Child

At Burton Road we aspire for our children to develop a strong sense of what is right and wrong. They will discuss and debate, and know they need to question what they see, read and hear. They will develop a strong moral compass and uphold virtues such as: tolerance, respect, equality. We will achieve this by:

•          ensuring children are provided with a range of opportunities to discuss moral questions and form their opinions and arguments.

•          providing children with the opportunity to learn about social and moral dilemmas faced by people in history and across the world.

•          providing a strong moral and social education and equip children to recognise and challenge prejudice and inequality

• Implementing our new PSHCE curriculum new golden values of: friendship, tolerance, resilience and respect.

2. The Knowledgeable Child

Our children will build a strong knowledge of the areas studied and a wider general knowledge. They will form a bank of strong, retained knowledge which will stay with them on their life-long learning journey.  This knowledge will include a secure base-line in the core literacy and numeracy skills that are essential to succeed in life. Children will leave Burton Road as highly literate pupils who can show depth to these skills with the application of them. As a school we are committed to engaging in projects that develop the breadth of these skills. We are also committed to the acquisition and application of knowledge throughout the full curriculum. This will include designing teaching sequences, in all subjects, that can develop the fluency shown in Maths and English. Teachers will be aware of how pupils learn at a deeper level and assess to what extent knowledge has been retained. They will plan their curriculum maps so that key, age related, knowledge is specifically identified, assessed and used in a meaningful context.

In order to achieve the above, Burton Road Primary School will:

• provide pupils with a range of high-quality texts which will widen understanding of the world and the breadth of literature.

• provide a rich and varied, question led curriculum which built upon strong, core retained knowledge.

• provide excellent teaching and learning which is: knowledgeable, well informed and consistently delivers memorable experiences so that children can make sense of and use the knowledge that they acquire.

3. The Resilient Child

Firstly, to develop resilience ambition will be nurtured in all our children. The school permeates a culture of high expectations for all. This something that is not just restricted to the classroom and academic achievement but is transferable to: the sports field, behaviour, drama productions and enterprise projects. The school has a high participation in all these endeavours and strongly believe that these opportunities and competitive sports develop resilience through: encouraging teamwork, overcoming challenges, perseverance and the setting and achieving of goals. The school strongly supports the message that success is never achieved without ambition, dedication and hard-work. Knock backs are experiences that they you draw on, shape you and make you stronger.

The school had adopted a growth mind-set and is promoting this throughout the school. This is mainly regarding positive thinking and adopting a positive thinking model. The principles that underpin this will be promoted in every classroom at an age appropriate level. Our children will build confidence in their own ability and those of others. They will be exposed to situations which give them the chance to flourish and celebrate their achievements. They will be optimistic and positive about themselves and their abilities – they will have the self-esteem needed to take risks and test their limitations.

4. The Global/Lifelong Learner

Learning is brought to life through current contexts that connects to our children’s lives - who they are, how they fit into the world and how they contribute back. Our curriculum connects to real life, promotes thinking as a global citizen and develops the character skills so that young people can make meaningful contributions to society. Even very young children are trying to make sense of a world marked by division, conflict, environmental change and extreme inequality and poverty. It is designed to enable children to make deep connections between learning and understanding the world that they live in, leading to children connecting taught knowledge and skills with agency and purpose.

Therefore, we ensure learning is ‘deep’ rather than shallow. Deep learning requires planning for and modelling behaviours and actions associated with:

• deeper thinking
• deeper purpose
• active and collaborative engagement so that children meet the world but are

 not at the centre of it.

We see our curriculum as a vehicle for connecting with the bigger cause. This means we enable children to form meaningful relationships with their learning, see patterns and apply skills into a context where learning can make a difference. Children see that their learning has human significance. They understand that their global learning is relevant to future decisions and the active contribution they can make to the world.

In developing global learners we will seek to do the following:

• Design a curriculum which enables children to: consider, explain, discuss, justify,

research, collaborate, innovate, present, evaluate and reflect.

• Select subject matter which is current that allows the children to learn deeper than the surface level
• Helps children to make sense of an increasingly globalised, complex and rapidly

changing world

• Enables critical thinking about world issues
• Develops awareness of own actions can have on others and the wider community
• Helps children to develop attitudes and dispositions to make a positive contribution to the world.