PSHE
PHSCE Narration
The PHSCE curriculum has been intentionally designed to ensure children develop a substantive knowledge (factual content) alongside the development of disciplinary knowledge (the action taken within a specific subject to gain knowledge) as they learn the fundamental elements of what it is to be a well-rounded, successful citizen. Through key PHSCE high-dividend concepts, children will study a range of different communities and aspects of life. The curriculum has been designed and sequenced to equip our children with a secure, coherent knowledge about our ever-changing, diverse world and local communities. This develops both subject proficiency and deeper learning associations in order for children to construct a secure schema within PHSCE. Units of work have been deliberately selected and sequenced within the Long-Term Map to aid children’s retention of knowledge, utilising the principles of Cognitive Science.
A high-quality citizenship education helps to provide pupils with knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare them to play a full and active part in society. In particular, citizenship education should foster pupils’ keen awareness and understanding of democracy, government and how laws are made and upheld. Teaching should equip pupils with the skills and knowledge to explore political and social issues critically, to weigh evidence, debate and make reasoned arguments. It should also prepare pupils to take their place in society as responsible citizens, manage their money well and make sound financial decisions.
(National Curriculum 2014)
The following high-dividend concepts have been identified as an integral part of the PHSCE curriculum: citizenship, community, goals, health, relationships and change. These form the key conceptual understanding through which PHSCE is taught; they are frequently reinforced and developed. Teachers will make explicit reference to where children have met these concepts previously in the curriculum.
The teaching of PHSCE is driven by knowledge and discussion through a theme that seeks to capitalise on children's curiosity and prior learning. Units of work are structured around an overarching topic to ensure teaching is focused and children are working towards a clearly defined outcome. The overarching topic is broken down into small themes to provide incremental progression that grows over a series of lessons to allow learning of content to be manageable. The PHSCE pedagogy and curriculum has been developed to ensure learning is not just encountered but remembered. The substantive knowledge content is detailed within the Jigsaw Puzzle Outcomes and Jigsaw unit planning; disciplinary knowledge is mapped out in the Jigsaw Puzzle Outcomes, as well as within unit planning.
At the heart of our approach is retrieval practice and revisiting knowledge. Retrieval practice involves deliberately recalling knowledge from memory to make learning more robust and connected. Units of work refer to learning from previous units to enable children to grapple with PHSCE concepts such as 'community', and 'changes' (see links referenced below).
Horizontal links are explicitly made e.g., Year Three children learn about families and their differences in Autumn Two (Celebrating Difference), including family conflict and how to man. When children cover the unit ‘Relationships’ in Summer One, teachers will explicitly link the knowledge learned previously about families when the children learn about family roles and relationships.
Vertical links will be made as each year the same units of work are covered in the same order as the previous year, giving the children opportunities to revisit previous leaning whilst enhancing this with new substantive and disciplinary knowledge.
Diagonal links will be made, particularly where this is cross-curricular. e.g., links between PHSCE and English: lots of opportunities for speaking and listening during discussions and for drama and role play activities. Links between PHSCE and Art: the children have opportunities to present their work using art techniques and different medium.
Links to Key Stage 1: In Lower Key Stage 2, the children revisit and build upon the Jigsaw units of work that have been previously taught within Key Stage 1.
During Lower Key Stage 2 the following units of work are covered: Being Me in My World, Celebrating Difference, Dreams and Goals, Healthy Me, Relationships and Changing Me.
During Upper Key Stage 2, the units of work from Lower Key Stage 2 are repeated, enabling the children to revisit and build upon the substantive and disciplinary knowledge that has been previously taught.
The Park PHSCE curriculum reflects our school ethos and the ever-changing family units and groups of people that are representative of our school and society.
The Park PHSCE curriculum and pedagogy will therefore enable children to begin secondary school with the ability to celebrate diversity, respect and value others in all communities and within their school environment and to be polite and helpful members of the community, enabling them to develop into successful citizens.
