Implementation

Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development, Fundamental British Values and Prevent Duty

Alongside our integrated curriculum and continued whole school focus on children’s social and emotional development our Personal Development curriculum further develops children’s Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development (SMSC). Children are explicitly taught to understand, accept, respect and celebrate diversity. They learn to respect the faiths, feelings and values of others, appreciate diverse viewpoints and reflect upon these. They are taught about the law, learn how to recognise right from wrong, understand consequences and are afforded time to investigate moral and social issues, offering their own viewpoints. They also develop skills to cooperate and participate with others and resolve conflict.

Our Personal Development curriculum is designed to specifically promote the Fundamental British Values of democracy, the rule of law, liberty, respect and tolerance. Children learn about the role of and to have respect for public institutions and services in Britain including Britain’s parliamentary system. The role of democracy and the democratic process is explored in depth to ensure pupils leave us with a good understanding of how this impacts daily life. Pupils develop skills and attitudes in these areas that will allow them to participate fully in and contribute positively to life in modern Britain.

 Schools have a legal duty to prevent pupils from becoming radicalised. At Thomas Jones we actively implement our Prevent Duty through Personal Development. All teachers assess the risk of children being drawn into terrorism through relevant lessons and discussions in class and ensure that they challenge any extremist ideas which can be used to legitimise terrorism. Teachers ensure that they create an open platform for discussion through lessons, where pupils feel confident to raise any concerns or queries and know that they will be heard. Our curriculum actively promotes safeguarding and teaches pupils how to stay safe, how to protect themselves from harm and how to take responsibility for their own and others’ safety.

Core Themes

At Thomas Jones, we have selected six core themes around which we have organised our programme of study. Each theme, and the learning opportunities which are developed within it, has been selected to ensure a broad, balanced and progressive curriculum that meets the needs of the children within our school and their lives outside of school as well as meeting the requirements of the statutory guidance. All six core themes are explored in each year group and each unit is approached through a key question.

Our six core themes and the areas we have included within them are as follows:

1. Identity and Belonging (including personal identity, where they fit in, community, similarities and differences, diversity and equality, prejudice and discrimination, stereotypes and naming body parts)
2. Feelings, Friendships and Behaviour (including range and intensity of feelings, feelings vocabulary, own and others’ feelings, managing and responding to feelings, seeking support, healthy and happy relationships (including online), cooperation, self-respect, change and loss and relationship law)
3. Health and Wellbeing (including mental and physical health and ill health, a balanced healthy lifestyle (including hygiene, diet, exercise, sun safety, dental hygiene, sleep, activities, time with friends and family), medicine, self-worth, growing and changing, risks and effects of drugs and human reproduction)
4. Safety and Risk (including identification, assessment and how to manage risk, keeping safe in familiar and unfamiliar environments (including online), resisting pressure, emergency help and first aid, responding to adults, privacy, who keeps us safe and how to seek help)
5. Money and the Workplace (including economic understanding, keeping money safe and risks and influences, personal strengths and skills, employability and choice)
6. Being a Good Citizen (including rights and responsibilities, rules and laws, human rights, caring for the environment, community and topical issues)

Skills and Attributes

Alongside our six core themes, we have also focused on eight key skills and attributes that we feel are essential for the children of our community. Each one has been carefully selected to ensure that children leave Thomas Jones with these skills and attributes fully embedded and are able to utilise these strengths in approaching new challenges and scenarios that face them throughout their life. Each unit of learning is mapped to the relevant key skills and attributes to ensure that teachers are focusing not just on children’s developing knowledge base but also on their development of these core attributes for a healthy and successful life.

Through the development of these skills and attributes, children are also taught strategies for identifying and accessing appropriate help and support and to understand that they are children, that their childhood is safeguarded and that they know how to receive the support and guidance they require at different times in their lives.

Our eight key skills and attributes are as follows:

1. Self-belief and self-confidence (including realistic self-image, self-worth, assertiveness, self-advocacy and self-respect, identifying unhelpful ‘thinking traps’)
2. Empathy and compassion (including impact on decision-making and behaviour)
3. Respect and tolerance (including respect to others’ right to their own beliefs, evaluating values, beliefs and opinions, valuing and respecting diversity, challenging stereotypes and generalisations)
4. Self-regulation (including building a positive mind set, managing strong emotions and impulses and learning strategies for managing these)
5. Self-reliance (including constructive self-reflection, effective goal setting, aspiration, taking positive risks, recognising and managing peer influence)
6. Responsibility (including time management, questioning and analysing (including separating fact from speculation or opinion), making decisions)
7. Resilience (including self-motivation, perseverance and adaptability)
8. Management of risk (including identification, assessment and predictions, strategies to manage risk to self and others)

Teaching & Learning

At the start of a unit of learning, it is essential that the class teacher has a clear overview of the whole class’ knowledge, understanding and skills. Teachers should always track back to pupils’ prior learning, revisiting and building upon this throughout the unit. In addition, baseline assessment activities should be carried out and reviewed to track pupils’ progress through the unit.

Assessing progress over the course of a lesson or series of lessons

At the end of the lesson or series of lessons, pupils are given opportunities to demonstrate the progress they have made from their starting point assessed in the baseline activity. Possibly the simplest and most effective way of demonstrating progress is to either repeat, or better still, revisit the original baseline activity. Some baseline assessment activities (such as mind-maps, ‘draw and write’, ‘explain to an alien’), lend themselves very well to a simple revisit where each pupil uses a different colour to add to their baseline activity and make any changes they now want to make, allowing the pupil and teacher to clearly see how far they have come in their learning. In other cases, pupils might repeat the activity or carry out a completely different activity. Taking the examples of baseline activities above, the table below indicates possible ways of revisiting or using those activities to demonstrate progress at the end of the lesson or series of lessons. Again this is not a definitive list and activities should always be used flexibly to meet the needs of pupils and the learning objectives.

Using baseline activities as the basis for the end point activity/Assessment

Additional ideas for end point activities to demonstrate learning at the end of a series of lessons:

• Presentations
• Producing resources and materials to teach younger pupils
• Leading a discussion or other learning activity with younger pupils
• Producing a blog or podcast
• Keeping a journal, diary or log of times when they have demonstrated a particular skill or attribute during the week