When we began to re-imagine our curriculum, staff and governors were clear that we wanted it to be representative of the global majority and intentional in its development of knowledge that will foster racial literacy. As a direct result of that intent, as we developed the curriculum three themes evolved, along with a fourth related to Local Anchor Points.
Alongside ensuring we teach the content of the National Curriculum in a systematic way, these themes are woven through the subjects to ensure that our curriculum is uniquely 'Southville', reflecting our values and location.
Here is an overview of each theme. Please click on the link to see an overview of how each of these themes is layered through the school.
Diverse Figures
Every school curriculum is filled with stories about people and their achievements, and our curriculum sets out to ensure that the people we focus upon are representative of the global population. This is important for three main reasons:
1. We are sharing a representative view of the people who have helped to shape the world;
2. All children are able to see, and be inspired by, people who look like them, and/or have a similar background;
3. We share a range of stories, not just those which focus upon overcoming oppression or discrimination.
We incorporate some of the CARGO Classroom artwork and resources within our curriculum, as well as using books and online resources to bring the stories to life.
The overview below provides some examples of the people we study in each year group. However this is an ever-growing list because whether our teachers are looking for authors, scientists, artists, visitors or somebody else to enhance our curriculum, increasing the diversity of our references is a priority.
Link: Diverse Figures Overview
Local Anchor Points
To enable children to connect with their learning and see the immediate relevance of each aspect of the curriculum, we endeavour to ensure that every unit has a meaningful local link. Some units are all about the local area, which makes this easy, whilst others, with a more international focus, have required us to delve deeper into the stories and find the connections to BS3 and Bristol. We have worked with local History experts to embed this knowledge into our curriculum.
Link: Local Anchor Points Overview
Global Citizen
Alongside establishing local anchor-points, our Connection value means we want our children to 'Be a Global Citizen' and so we ensure that throughout our curriculum, children get to study a variety of places around the world. Often, these are chosen because they specifically link to other themes. For example, in Year 2 children study Jamaica, which provides a rich context for the later Year 5 unit about Windrush and St Paul's Carnival. There is a strong thread of environmental awareness within this theme, linking to our Care value, specifically 'Looking After Our World'.
Human Migration
It is important to us that children understand what migration is, how the movement of people around the world has come about at different points in time and the impact of this both on the people and places. The concept of movement around the world is first introduced in Key Stage 1, by learning about air travel and the evolution of the global chocolate trade, and further developed throughout Key Stage 2 by exploring different forms of migration including, in Year 6, the forced migration of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Link: Human Migration Overview
We believe that the ways in which these themes support and interlink with each other help to build layers of understanding which are vital if we are to enable our children to become globally-minded and racially literate. We are proud of this aspect of our curriculum whilst recognising that there is still much to do and will continue to look for opportunities to further enrich these themes.