My Thinking

We believe that students deserve a creative and ambitious My Thinking curriculum, rich in skills and knowledge, which ignites curiosity and prepares them well for their future.

The My Thinking curriculum will give students the opportunity to:

• Be exposed to, engage in, learn and discover mathematics, science and computing skills through varied, individualised and bespoke learning opportunities.
• Access a sequential / stepped approach to developing mathematics, science and computing skills in both specific lessons and cross curricular approaches. These focus on developing functional skills that the pupils can use in school, at home, the work place and the community.
• Develop valuable life skills to enable pupils to apply mathematical, scientific and computer skills and knowledge to the wider school curriculum and life situations.
• Recognise where they can use maths in ‘real life’ and to enable them to understand and make sense of the world around them, drawing on their My Thinking skills.
• Take risks in their learning, acknowledge and understand how to rectify their mistakes and misconceptions but, above all, challenge themselves.

Pupils will be exposed to My Thinking learning experiences as soon as they join us at Evergreen. This will begin with learning through a multi-sensory approach to learning, within a continuous provision and outdoor learning. As pupils progress throughout the school, they will experience more discrete teaching of My Thinking and this will be delivered in structured, sequential lessons.
The curriculum has been carefully designed and mapped out drawing upon the National Curriculum, The Early Years Foundation Stage and external evidence-based practice to create progression maps such as the switch progression document and other elements of the computing curriculum as well as the My Thinking strands of maths and science.

The My Thinking Curriculum has been sequenced so the current learning has been founded on prior development of relevant knowledge, skills and understanding. This starts in Reception within the continuous provision and pockets of My Thinking focuses. This then builds upon throughout their time at Evergreen with discrete, sequenced maths, science and computing lessons.
Pupils will have opportunities within other subjects to draw upon their My Thinking knowledge and skills such as using technology in literacy lessons. This gives pupils opportunities to generalise and expand their skills.
The curriculum is created with the pupils at the forefront and because of this, the learning outcomes are broken down into smaller steps and built upon within the sequence and progression of the curriculum.

Progression is evident in our evidence books that each pupil will have. The workbooks differ within each pathway but progress will be shown through pupil work, sequential teaching and appropriate marking. The assessment tool for maths and computing will also provide evidence of progression as each step within the curriculum will lead onto more developed learning outcomes.
As our pupils progress, we intend for our pupils to be able to understand the world around them, have the ability to reason mathematically, have a curiosity of the world around them and an appreciation of the beauty and power of maths, science and computing, as well as a sense of enjoyment and inquisitiveness about each subject area.

We aim to deliver a creative, ambitious My Thinking curriculum which is rich in knowledge and skills and to experience a meaningful, motivating and memorable My Thinking curriculum that has supported their development in maths, science and computing. We strive to ignite curiosity and prepare pupils for everyday life and future employment, where possible.
We want pupils to be able to use mathematical skills in everyday life and to develop a deep interest and curiosity about the world around them. Pupils will be supported to develop creative, technical and practical skills to perform everyday tasks confidently and to participate successfully in a technology fuelled world.

By the time pupils leave Evergreen School we want pupils to experience the feeling of success, understanding and be able to overcome problems by drawing on their skills gained from the My Thinking Curriculum. We want pupils to accept mistakes are part of improving (particularly with programming), learn to be adaptable in different situations as well as think effectively and logically about solutions.
We want pupils to leave us being able to, where possible, to use maths and technology as independent as possible. For some pupils this might be having an awareness of sequences (maths) or being able to make choices using switches (computing) but for others it might be using money skills to create a budget and use assistive technology (including smart phones) to support independence.

Curriculum Improvement Lead- Lizzie Faithfull