St Mary's Catholic Primary School

St Mary's Catholic Primary School

EducateProtectLoveServe

Our Curriculum

We aim to:

 Educate Protect Love Serve

Our Vision Statement:  With the love of Jesus and the inspiration of Mary at our heart, we will be the best we can be.  At St Mary’s we provide every member of our school family with the opportunity to achieve academically and thrive spiritually and socially.

 

In all our school we will develop a culture of high expectation and aspiration, based on our fundamental belief in the dignity of all human beings. We want all our pupils to flourish in safe, happy and enriching environments, taught and supported by adults who are skilled, motivated and committed to our shared vision and values.

 

Curriculum intent

 

St Mary’s curriculum is:

  • Rooted in our Gospel values and virtues with the child at the very centre of everything we do. Based on our four key areas for learning lifelong skills which permeates through everything we do. 
  • Focused on experiences, building positive relationships, demonstrating learnt values and embracing a learning culture. 
  • Focused on the child and their unique starting point and ensuring that they experience an exciting, inclusive, broad and balanced curriculum; one that unlocks their potential. 
  • A vehicle to develop the whole child as an individual; an advocate of their school; a member of their parish and community; a resident of the British Isles and a global citizen. 
  • Adapted to build on prior knowledge, skills and concepts
Our Implementation
 
Our school uses a topic approach to teaching and each class chooses six topics throughout the year. Topics are chosen to give a breadth of learning experiences and a depth of curriculum, where children develop skills and knowledge in a wide variety of areas. We are very lucky to live in Cornwall and every class chooses key topics which focus on Cornwall and our local area. Teachers also choose topics which encourage the children to build strong relationships with one another and give opportunities to explore Gospel Values, such as compassion and justice.
 
The St Mary’s curriculum encompasses a variety of different resources. For teaching and learning subject areas the school uses ‘White Rose Maths’, AET maths); Third space learning and Literacy shed. We also use ‘Talk for Writing’ to teach creative writing alongside Alan Peat resources for structuring the text. We review the teaching and learning on a half termly, termly and yearly basis, adapting the curriculum to meet the needs of the children in the cohorts. At the heart of our curriculum design (both hidden and subject explicit) is the child. We plan, teach and assess the skills and knowledge of each curriculum subject. We ensure that learning is delivered through an engaging and motivating topic/ project is and that subjects are linked together to form powerful understanding of concepts in a variety of contexts.
Our impact
 
Learning becomes relevant, engaging and purposeful. Children learn about their culture from where they live to how it affects others globally. Children will have a good grasp of skills and be able to draw on knowledge to enable and motivate them. Outcomes are improved across the board.
 
Our goal is for our children to leave our school ready for the next stage in their learning journey.
More information
 
If you have any questions about our curriculum, it's ethos or its content, please speak with our Headteacher or Deputy Headteacher.