If Sparken Hill Academy's Curriculum were a road sign...

Our Curriculum

At Sparken Hill Academy, our curriculum is everything we want our children to know, do and experience between joining our Nursery at three and leaving for secondary school at eleven. It is ambitious for every child, rooted in our local community, and carefully planned so that what children learn today builds securely on what they learned yesterday.

This page gives an overview of how our curriculum works. You can find more detail about each subject, our phases and our long-term plans using the links on the right-hand side of this page.

We want every child at Sparken Hill to leave us:

• Knowing more and remembering more. They should have a secure grasp of the important knowledge in each subject, not just a memory of having covered it.
• Confident readers, writers and communicators. Reading is at the heart of everything we do, and we want children to speak articulately and listen thoughtfully.
• Proud of where they come from and curious about the wider world. Our curriculum starts in Worksop and reaches out across history, cultures and continents.
• Ready for the next stage. They should have the knowledge, character and cultural experiences to thrive at secondary school and beyond.

Our curriculum is for every child. It is designed to be accessible to all our pupils, including children with special educational needs and disabilities, children who are learning English as an additional language, and children who may not otherwise have access to the experiences it offers.

Doing Less...Well!

We believe it is better to teach fewer things deeply than many things thinly. Each unit of work focuses on a small number of carefully chosen “known and remembered” statements: the essential knowledge we want every child to hold onto long after the unit ends. These are taught explicitly, revisited regularly and checked through assessment.

The Golden Thread

Every unit is organised around a big question, which we call its Golden Thread. Think of it like a string of beads: each lesson adds a new bead of knowledge, and the thread is what holds them together and gives the learning its shape. At the end of each unit, children return to the big question and use everything they have learned to answer it. For example, our Year 5 and 6 pupils study the Industrial Revolution through the question “What impact did mining have on the local area?”

A Two-Year Cycle

Our classes are organised in phases (Key Stage 1, Lower Key Stage 2 and Upper Key Stage 2), so we teach our topics over a two-year rolling cycle. This ensures that every child experiences the full breadth of the National Curriculum without repetition, whichever year they join a phase.

Carefully Sequenced

Each subject is mapped from Nursery to Year 6 so that knowledge and vocabulary build step by step. Teachers know exactly what children have learned before and what they will learn next. Our long-term plans, medium-term plans and assessment grids all use the same end points, so what we plan, what we teach and what we assess are always aligned.

We want our children to understand and value their own community. Our curriculum draws on Worksop’s history and landscape wherever we can. Examples include our Reception topic Wonderful Worksop and our Upper Key Stage 2 local study of coal mining, which is brought to life by visits from former miners. Trips, visitors and “wow” experiences are planned into every topic to give children memorable experiences that bring their learning to life.

Mathematics is taught using White Rose Maths, which builds fluency, reasoning and problem-solving in small, connected steps, using practical resources and pictures to secure understanding before moving to abstract methods.

• Music is based on the Department for Education’s Model Music Curriculum, adapted for our school. We protect time for music and PE in every week. Music is taught to whole class level every week of every year from F1 to Year 6. It also features heavily in our after school provision.
• Religious Education follows the Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire Agreed Syllabus 2026–2031.
• British Values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance are woven throughout our curriculum, particularly in PSHE.
• Oracy matters too. We explicitly teach children to ask good questions, explain their thinking and take part in discussion.

• regular low-stakes quizzes and recall activities
• end-of-unit Golden Thread assessments against each unit’s end points
• pupil voice
• work in books
• lesson visits by our subject leaders and senior team

Most importantly, we look for children who can talk confidently about what they have learned, make links between subjects, and approach new learning with curiosity.

Use the links on the right to explore:

• our individual subject pages
• our long-term curriculum plans
• our approach to reading and phonics
• our Early Years curriculum
• our SEND provision

 

If you would like to know more about our curriculum, please speak to your child’s class teacher or contact the school office on 01909 534060 or at office@sparkenhill.com .

Parents have the right to withdraw their child from all or part of Religious Education, and from the sex education elements of RSHE (but not from Relationships Education, Health Education or the science curriculum). Please contact the Principal to discuss this.