How to plan using the Cornerstones Curriculum
In recent years, cognitive science has become hugely influential in designing and implementing the primary curriculum. This emerging evidence has provided us here at Cornerstones with a new and exciting way of thinking about how we design our curriculum so that we can help children to know and do more.
As a result, we have now developed an evidence-informed curriculum called the Cornerstones Curriculum. This curriculum takes the most robust aspects of cognitive research and applies them in intelligent and practical ways. Not only will this save you time, but it will also ensure your curriculum is completely up to date with the latest cognitive theory.
While we have incorporated many aspects of current research into the Cornerstones Curriculum, we remain a strong advocate of the power of professional knowledge. The flexibility of the Cornerstones Curriculum and Maestro’s impressive functionality means that you can use, adapt and tailor the curriculum to meet your school’s specific needs and aims.
To learn more about the cognitive science in the Cornerstones Curriculum, please read our Evidence-informed learning booklet, available on our main website.
Where to start
When planning the Cornerstones Curriculum, it is useful to begin with an overview of each subject to help you understand the main ideas of what is needed to be taught. It may be worth starting with our overview documents, located in the Library. This can then help you plan out the finer details, make connections between other subjects and understand how this may sequence into prior or future learning. Within Maestro, there are many tools that highlight these connections across the projects, including CurriculumPRO.
We would advise reading through all the projects you are planning to teach for a term to help you understand the lesson sequence and connections between the projects. You can then look at the coverage of objectives in specific lessons, work out how the projects fit into your timetable and think about whether you need to ‘hide’ any lessons that you do not plan to teach. It is important to note here that we would advise teaching all the lessons in a project, as removing any would impact the narrative of the project. However, we also recognise that other factors can influence curriculum planning, which means it is not always possible to fit everything in, so understanding the sequence and coverage of lessons can help you make a more informed choice.
Using the timetable
Using the timetable can help you plan the lessons from the projects and map them out around your other subjects or events that may occur throughout your week. How you plan the lessons within your timetable will be different to how another school does this. For example, you may decide to do two geography lessons a week, while another school delivers all the geography lessons within a two-week period. Alternatively, you may decide to have an arts week, where you teach the lessons from an art project over the course of a week, at the end of teaching one of the sequenced projects. This flexibility works well, as long as everything remains in the correct sequence as set out in the curriculum model. For more information on how to use the timetable, please see Planning using the timetable.
You may also wish to stagger elements of the different projects, such as the Memorable Experiences and Innovate stages, as these tend to be longer sessions and may be spread over the course of a week. Below is a sample of a plan for Year 1, using the Cornerstones Curriculum for the spring term, based on a 12-week period. Where possible, we recommend 6.5 hours of Cornerstones lessons per week, which includes using 1 literacy lesson (a cross-curricular opportunity). This leaves opportunities to teach other subjects, such as English, maths, etc.
How does English fit in?
Through the Cornerstones Curriculum, we have linked the main project to genres of writing in English. This allows schools to design and deliver their own English curriculum in line with existing schemes already used in school.
Each main project has a series of three or four English Resource packs spread across each of the stages. Each resource pack is closely linked to the weekly subject focus and allows children to reinforce their subject knowledge through a series of reading and writing tasks.
Packs include suggested themes for writing, model texts, genre checklists, and writing frames. There is also a book/novel study in a separate section that includes a book/novel organiser and a comprehension test with a full mark scheme. The lessons for these can be planned using the lesson designer within each stage of the project, which can then be added to your timetable.
Adapting planning
When thinking about differentiation and challenge, it is worth considering the Ofsted school inspection handbook, which states,
'Leaders of good and outstanding schools adopt or construct a curriculum that is ambitious and designed to give all pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils and including pupils with SEND, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life'.
Planning should reflect the school's steps to teach an ambitious curriculum, particularly how they plan for pupils to acquire the necessary knowledge of the curriculum. This, of course, is an entitlement for all children, regardless of their starting points or prior learning. More recently, it is expected that all children should be taught the same content. Where needed, teaching strategies and resources should enable all children to access the same curriculum. This should be considered at a school level rather than by individual teachers. Asking questions such as 'How do we support all pupils?', 'How do we enable all children to access our ambitious curriculum?' and, 'What are the teaching strategies we can use to enable all children to succeed?' are worth discussing with all colleagues so that all teachers feel supported and use consistent teaching strategies.
Maestro can help you with the adaptation of projects. Using the knowledge and skills framework enables you to see the progression of a subject across all year groups and provides clear endpoints. These objectives are linked to each activity within a project, with the option to 'view progression' to see previous or future year groups. Lessons may also be adapted when using the timetable by adding objectives from prior or future year groups.
Alternatively, when clicking that a lesson has been taught, you have the option to mark attainments against objectives for individuals, learning groups or the entire class for prior or future year groups. You also have the teacher notes section within the lesson plan on the timetable to add your own adaptations, and the lesson builder within the project if you wish to add your own lessons.
How do I fit my planning into the limited time I have available?
Fitting everything into a weekly timetable is always a challenge. The curriculum is often overcrowded, and you may need to seek more creative ways to manage the time you have. Flexibility is undoubtedly crucial here, that is, don’t stick to traditional timetable slots just because it has always been that way. Combine lessons where it works, don’t make lessons any longer than they need to be; sometimes tasks can be done in much shorter periods than the traditional timetable blocks.
Suppose you find that your curriculum is overcrowded. In that case, it is worth reviewing it, looking for any unnecessary duplication, and seeing if there are any other creative ways to teach it. For more help with this, please do not hesitate to contact us to arrange an online meeting with one of our Curriculum Advisers.
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