Rocklands Primary School
– a knowledge-based curriculum for all.
What we do ...
At Rocklands Primary School, we are proud to have a knowledge-based curriculum that stimulates our children into asking searching questions, shapes their learning and enables them to develop into independent thinkers and learners. Our curriculum is engaging, exciting and innovative, encompassing and celebrating all curriculum areas, helping to ensure that our children develop the knowledge and skills they need to excel and become creative and curious citizens.
Our curriculum has been designed to encompass knowledge and understanding of the world in which we live, and also the events that have shaped it in the past to make it what it is today. The topics have been designed to complement and build on one another with clear progression and links so that, in subsequent classes, they will be able to explore concepts deeper, applying their knowledge in different contexts.
Our community is at the heart of our teaching and learning and topics have been selected to embrace the wider community in which we live, celebrating our diverse family, links with local businesses and our local churches, as well as expanding children's knowledge of events and places they wouldn't ordinarily visit or know about.
Why we do it...
In recent decades, cognitive scientists have confirmed the need for a knowledge-based curriculum for two reasons:
- Knowledge frees up your brain's capacity for thinking
Cognitive scientists have found that our brain works at different speeds, depending on whether we have learned something already or whether we are relying on "working memory". Working memory is new information you can keep in your head and is very limited (holding between three and seven pieces of new information). That is why learning your times tables by heart is useful. Completing more complex calculations is made more simple if knowledge of tables is already 'locked in'.
- We learn new things by connecting them to old things
The way in which the brain stores new information and makes inferences and discoveries is by connecting to existing stored knowledge (schema). You cannot have skills without knowledge, because you cannot evaluate something you do not know anything about. You also cannot come up with new ideas without jumping off existing ones.
