Curriculum Intent

Our Approach

Brookfield School delivers an exciting, innovative and holistic curriculum specifically designed to meet the needs of pupils with an EHCP for Social, Emotional and Mental Health, who may have experienced trauma and/or difficulties in previous educational settings.

Our 4 key development areas aim to prepare every pupil to meet current and future demands and prepare them for life beyond school.

Starting points are varied but each individual learning pathway ensures that ALL pupils will be prepared to be or become:

Ready to Learn
Lifelong Learners
Responsible Citizens
Future Ready

Each development area is broken down into skills, qualities and attributes that:

Inform planning
Provide focus and direction
Ensure quality outcomes

These 4 areas form the golden threads that underpin all aspects of life at Brookfield:

Ready to Learn

Brookfield pupils will:

Re-engage positively with learning
Address historic low prior attainment and attainment
Gain resilience and other key skills
Build confidence and trust
Make sense of domestic and environmental challenges
Tackle gaps in learning
Develop strategies to cope with specific learning needs
Build social skills and empathy
Develop a sense of belonging
Focus on self and then others

Lifelong Learners

Brookfield pupils:

Study a broad range of subjects
Value academic and vocational styles of learning
Take opportunities to learn and participate outside of the classroom
Take pride in their achievements
Develop their culture capital and an appreciation of cultures and societies beyond their own experience
Develop a love for learning
Understand the benefits of attendance and engagement

Responsible Citizens

Brookfield pupils:

Respect people from other cultures, races and faiths
Value equality and diversity
Care for the school environment and contribute to the local community
Know what is going on in the wider world
Understand the importance of democracy
Know how to build and maintain relationships with others
Know how to look after their mental and physical health

Future Ready

Brookfield pupils:

Are literate and numerate
Are digitally literate
Are financially literate
Are able to express themselves appropriately in a range of contexts
Are aspirational about their future plans
Develop the skills and qualities that are required to progress to the next stage of education and employment
Increase self-regulation and develop independence
Know how to keep themselves and others safe
Have access to appropriate Careers Education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG)

In addition, we promote the safety and security of our pupils by taking a trauma informed approach to the curriculum. This means we aim to:

Provide our children with daily access to experienced, understanding and emotionally supportive adults, who know them, believe in them, and can relate to them with compassion, empathy and unconditional positive regard.
Support children experiencing painful life events, by helping them process, work through and make sense of what has happened.
Ensure that staff interact with children at all times with kindness and compassion.
Develop our settings in ways that help children feel calm and safe.
Foster a culture in which staff and other adults interact with all children in a way that makes them feel valued as individuals throughout their day
Adjust our expectations of vulnerable children to correspond with their developmental capabilities and experience of traumatic stress.
Provide targeted, professional support and intervention (in house and/or external)

All pupils and their families have access to support from our PDSI team. Through robust assessment systems, we are able to identify pupils and families most at risk. Intervention and support needs are assessed, implemented and monitored weekly to ensure that each pupil is fully supported and more able to learn.

All of our pupils have social-emotional needs and this need underpins our curriculum offer. In order to support staff, students and parents/carers in recognising both SEMH and academic progress, we measure social skills, ability to understand and manage emotions, and developmental deficits, in addition to measures for academic development. This is achieved using daily, weekly, and termly monitoring of attendance, engagement (Class Charts) learning, behaviour, social and emotional needs (Snap B) and personal impacting factors (PIF).

Parent/Carer review day

At the start of each term, we invite parents and carers into school to share our plans and set targets for the term ahead. This provides an opportunity to discuss curriculum content, how you may provide additional support and ensure that what is on offer matches expectations and aspirations. We fully appreciate and value the importance of home:school partnership and the termly review meeting supports this.

Literacy Approach

At Brookfield we see literacy as a fundamental aspect of academic success across the curriculum. For so many of our pupils, literacy is the main barrier to learning and it is our intention to change this. Literacy at Brookfield is not viewed as merely a medley of general skills, or the sole responsibility of English teachers, but rather as being grounded in the specifics of individual subjects. With this in mind, staff at Brookfield take a research led approach to implementing and designing strategies to enhance access to curriculum through developing ‘disciplinary literacy’ skills.

This includes providing targeted vocabulary instruction in all subjects, as well as increasing students’ ability to read complex academic texts by combining writing instruction with reading in all subjects, and offering ample opportunities for structured talk relative to success across the entire curriculum. High quality literacy interventions that pay mind to disciplinary literacy in all areas of study are also available for struggling students, or likewise to improve progress for our most able learners.

Subject Intent Statements

The fundamental ‘GOLDEN THREAD’ detailed above supports and guides individual subject areas.

Detailed information for subject specific intent, implementation and impact can be accessed by clicking on the links below.

English

‘The curriculum for English at Brookfield looks to develop students through bespoke qualification pathways, as well as, develop them personally through increasing culture capital, and by providing schemes of leaning which are mindful of social and personal issues affecting students in an SEMH context and beyond’

Maths

‘At Brookfield School, we intend to provide all children with a broad and balanced maths curriculum. The National Curriculum aims are embedded within maths lessons and existing knowledge is developed over time. We are committed to ensuring that children are able to recognise how essential mathematics is in everyday life. Where possible, we link topics to other subjects as maths is critical to the sciences, technology, financial literacy and most forms of employment in their future. We are passionate about using engaging resources and high-quality lessons to spark enthusiasm and enhance the appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics’

Science

‘Science has changed our lives and is vital to the world’s future prosperity, and all pupils should be taught essential aspects of the knowledge, methods, processes and uses of science. Through building up a body of key foundational knowledge and concepts, pupils are encouraged to recognise the power of rational explanation and develop a sense of excitement and curiosity about natural phenomena. They will be encouraged to understand how science can be used to explain what is occurring, predict how things will behave, and analyse causes’

Personal & Social Development (PSD)

At Brookfield, we believe that the curriculum offer should bring to life our vision of “overcoming barriers for a brighter future.” The best way to prepare our young people for the future is to ensure all our young people have access to an outstanding educational experience, tailored to individual need which supports their next steps post-16. This vision is underpinned by a holistic PSD curriculum combining PSHCE, RE, British Values, SMSC and CEIAG which aims to equip pupils with accurate, balanced and relevant knowledge to enable students to develop the skills and attributes they need to keep themselves healthy and safe and to prepare them for life and work in modern Britain.

Outdoor Education