Curriculum implementation

Projects
 

The progression framework is implemented through a series of engaging and knowledge-rich projects. The projects are organised so that curriculum content, knowledge and skills are taught in a well-sequenced way that allows children to learn and do more as they progress throughout each year group. Each project is subject-driven and contains high-quality teaching resources.
 

Lesson plans
 

Each project is delivered through a series of well-planned lessons built around Cornerstones’ four-stage pedagogy Engage-Develop-Innovate-Express. 
 

Teaching resources
 

Each lesson is supported by the best primary resources available. Each resource is meticulously researched and designed for maximum learning benefits. We insist on using only the best quality images and refrain from using cartoons or simplified imagery. This ensures that all children can see authentic representations of people and places.

 

Knowledge organisers

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Each project has a knowledge organiser that sets out the core information children need to know. Unlike more secondary-based offerings, our knowledge organisers present information in a fluent, engaging and age-appropriate way and can be used flexibly across the curriculum. Each knowledge organiser is rich in vocabulary and includes a project glossary. All EYFS projects contain an age-appropriate version of our knowledge organisers entitled ‘Did you know?’

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For students to succeed in a particular area, they must have a foundation of factual knowledge, understand those facts in the context of a conceptual framework and organise knowledge in order to facilitate retrieval and application (Bransford et al., 2000). We can see knowledge organisers as a way to enable this, in a much more systematic way than traditional revision guides and textbooks.

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When making decisions about what must be included we have to consider that not everything can be included on an A4 piece of paper. So we must balance the need to use concise space-saving definitions while still including meaning enough for it to be useful. The finite space also leads to choices about which knowledge we deem most important and which we exclude. Powerful knowledge, as defined by Young (Yong, 2013), is specialised rather than general knowledge, and is differentiated from the experiences of students. Finally, we have to decide which knowledge is most useful for the understanding of the domain and which is important for the sample of the domain – the assessment. For example, the continued development of the USSR post-1945 would be useful knowledge for students studying Animal Farm but would not be assessed, so should it be included on the KO?

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As well as what to include, we also need to think about how the material is presented. In knowledge organisers, information is commonly presented in list form, which not be the best way to depict it in terms of showing links between ideas. It is therefore important that information is organised in such a way as to facilitate further organisation. Material should also be presented in such a way that it can be easily tested, to maximise the opportunity for retrieval practice.

The use of knowledge organisers needs to be integrated into teachers’ practice and students’ habits. This includes using the following strategies regularly and routinely.

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Regular retrieval practice is important, because active retrieval aids later retention (Roediger et al., 2011). This can take various forms, e.g. low-stakes quizzes during lessons, or writing down the dates for key events in a timeline from the KO. It could be free recall, where students write down everything that they can remember on the topic, before checking the KO, or perhaps filling in a blank (or partially blank) knowledge organiser. Testing will also identify gaps in knowledge, lead to more learning on the next study session and produce better organisation of knowledge (Roediger et al., 2011).

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We ensure that the material included in knowledge organisers is elaborated upon, by relating it to additional knowledge associated with it, often in the form of ‘why’ questions. There is an element of retrieval practice contained in this strategy, known as elaborative interrogation, but it works by ensuring that there is some sort of active understanding and meaningful consideration of what is being learnt (Willingham, 2014). Building complex schemas requires knowledge to be connected, so that this can be used when learning X by asking, ‘How does concept X relate to concept Y?’

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All of these strategies are regularly used by teachers, but we must ensure that students are aware of how and when to use these strategies themselves, something that won’t happen without explicit instruction (Zimmerman, 2010). When using knowledge organisers in class, teachers can articulate why the particular strategy being used is effective and model its use with the KO. For students to get the most out of this, we can encourage them to use the metacognitive regulation cycle: plan how to undertake the task; monitor the effectiveness of the strategy; evaluate the overall success (EEF, 2018). For example, students might wish to learn a series of events and dates, so they might plan to use flashcards in several ways. They know that retrieval practice is effective so they use them to self-quiz. They know that elaborative interrogation is important, so they consider why each event was important and how it contributed to ultimate outcomes. They understand that knowledge may stick better if organised in different ways, so they organise the dates chronologically. They monitor which dates are known, then retest those not yet learnt. They reflect, following this, on tricky dates and then place each in turn in the centre of a concept map and consider how each relates to the other dates.