St Mary's CofE (Aided) Primary School is committed to meeting the requirements of the primary National Curriculum.
ACTIVE
ENGAGING
MEANINGFUL
ENGAGING
MEANINGFUL
MEMORABLE
Our curriculum intent - As a school, we have set out our curriculum intent with 'a child-centred curriculum'. All of our subject intents link to our main curriculum intent.
ACTIVE (To help the children to know, remember and do more and have first hand experiences within the school and community)
ENGAGING (To engage the children to learn key concepts and knowledge in a progressive way that will inspire academic success and support them in later employment)
MEANINGFUL (To provoke a personal response, use vocabulary, know their place in the world, and develop as global citizens with clear understanding of their own community)
MEMORABLE (To ensure that learning outcomes are established in long term memory)
Intent - Our curriculum is planned, sequenced, ambitious and rooted in the best intentions for lifelong learning and our curriculum builds on progressive core knowledge and key curriculum concepts with clear end points for our pupils. Most of our curriculum is history-, geography- and science-led and is focussed around strands which run all the way through the learning, allowing the children to develop their subject knowledge and make connections. Our curriculum will lead pupils to being able to recall and describe the knowledge and concepts in familiar, unfamiliar, local and global contexts with a focus on the school's local context such as using Stane Street as a Roman Road and the River Arun for our Geography learning.
The curriculum activates the children's prior learning, and builds on their lived experiences through a broad and deep curriculum. Pupils are empowered to use written, oracy and digital communication skills to purposefully share and articulate their learning to others. Our curriculum enables our pupils to be successful, confident and responsible citizens.
We have worked hard over the last 18 months to update and improve our curriculum provision to make the learning as inspirational and meaningful to the children (whilst still covering the National Curriculum). Our staff meeting time and INSET days have developed our teachers' and subject leaders' thinking about the subject content and how we link the strands together for our children.
Implementation - Class teachers are responsible for planning the curriculum for their class; they create the learning environment which allows the learner to focus on the learning. They make decisions about what resources and materials they use and how they differentiate them appropriately. They do this by using their professional knowledge and expertise, sharing best practice, providing support for each other and using professional development opportunities with a focus on outcomes for individual pupils.
The learners' understanding is checked systematically through a teacher-led approach of retrieval practice with 'Remind me and Check In with Me'; the teachers identify misconceptions accurately and provide clear, direct feedback with live marking. Subject leaders and senior leaders are responsible for incorporating the progression in core knowledge skills and concepts into year group plans. We ensure that all teachers are familiar with the curriculum expectations through training, monitoring and coaching, with a focus on ensuring that outcomes can be achieved by all pupils. Teaching is designed to help learners to remember and hook learning in and focuses on long term memory acquisition and how to link new knowledge into larger concepts.
Impact - Class teachers routinely evaluate the progress of pupils within and across lessons using the curriculum frameworks to make judgements. They use this information to analyse how effectively pupils are achieving or exceeding expectations and to adapt their planning accordingly. Teachers provide subject leaders with timely, summative information about the outcomes of pupils in their class, through pupil progress meetings which centre around gap analysis and actions moving forward. Subject leaders and Senior Leaders routinely evaluate the summative outcomes for each area of responsibility. They use this analysis to identify any necessary actions that develop the quality of provision in their subject, to moderate assessments, and to benchmark outcomes against expectations beyond the school. We will assess pupils as outlined in our assessment policy.
For more details about the curriculum being followed this term by each class, please refer to the webpage for the particular class in which you are interested.
Our curriculum board with our intent and implementation and assessment points