Our Curriculum
The National Curriculum is split into three key stages:
- FOUNDATION STAGE - Reception year
- KEY STAGE 1 - Years 1 and 2
- Key stage 2 - Years 3-6
St. Anne's Catholic Primary follows the National Curriculum core subjects in English, Mathematics, Science and the foundation subjects of Art and design, Geography, History, Computing, Music, PE, and Design Technology. PSHE (Personal, Social and Health and Citizenship Education) is also included in the curriculum and underpins all that we teach in school. As a Catholic school, RE is a vital and integral part of the curriculum and given appropriate emphasis for a faith school.
We aim to foster a lifelong love of learning, through adopting a highly practical and cross-curricular approach to learning. Our creative curriculum aims to deliver a twenty-first century education that will equip our children with the skills required to be independent and responsible citizens. The curriculum is the means by which the school achieves its objective of educating children in the knowledge, skills and understanding that they need in order to lead fulfilling lives.
We are passionate that beyond that within the National Curriculum, our curriculum is designed in such a way that it:
- Extends pupils' vocabulary;
- promotes aspirations;
- Broadens their experiences;
- Helps acquire formal language;
- Combats levels of obesity and teaches and promotes healthy lives.
Where possible and relevant, literacy, geography, history and art & design are embedded within the topic framework. We use our own core scheme for the teaching of mathematics and where possible link mathematical skills into the topical content studied each term. We use the Read, Write inc. phonics scheme for our Early Years and KS1 pupils.
We try to capitalise on as many first hand experiences as possible and regularly invite visitors into school to enhance the children’s experiences. We also make careful choices regarding trips and visits made away from the school site. Such activities may be used a topic launch activity, for specific fieldwork activities or for consolidation/follow up to prior learning.
Curriculum Intent
Our aim at St Anne's is to enrich every child's school experience by creating an environment where they are celebrated and encouraged to flourish. Everything that we teach is underpinned by the Golden Rules of our behaviour policy
- Be respectful
- Be hard working
- Be kind
- Be honest
- Be Safe
- Be happy
- Be the best you can be
Our curriculum is driven by the need to prepare our children for lifelong learning - we want them to know and see the power of education and learning and know how transformative it can be in changing lives for the better. We want our children to 'Reach for the stars' and have the confidence and the ability to achieve whatever they dream of.
Our curriculum is rich and vibrant which we feel is both ambitious and accessible for all learners. It is carefully and coherently planned and sequenced towards building cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning. We want our children to remember more, know more and be able to do more, so regularly make links with past learning, whether that be the day before, in an earlier week, earlier term, different year group or even phase of education. Teachers know the whole curriculum well so they are able to do this and to help make links.
Our curriculum sets out:
- A clear list of the breadth of topics that will be covered
- The threshold concepts the children should understand
- Criteria for progression within the threshold concepts
We aim to develop curiosity! We aim to inspire and excite children by going beyond experiences in the classroom so they are exposed to the richest and most varied opportunities we can provide. At St. Anne's, through the teaching of *cultural capital (see note below) we prepare the children for the essential knowledge and skills they need for the future. Through developing Growth Mindset principles, our ambition is to develop determination, resilience, perseverance and a 'have-a-go' attitude, all within a Catholic framework.
*Cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviours and skills that a child can draw upon and which demonstrates their cultural awareness, knowledge and competence. It is one of the key ingredients a child will draw upon to be successful in society, their future career and the world of work. It is the best of what has been discovered, said and created.
*Cultural capital promotes social mobility and success.
*Cultural capital gives a child power. It helps them achieve goals, become successful and rise up the social ladder without necessarily having wealth or financial power.
*Cultural capital is having assets that give children the desire to aspire and achieve social mobility, whatever their starting point.
The aims of our curriculum are to:
- Promote our core values and a Catholic education in which children take responsibility for themselves and their actions and are respectful and resilient living out our mission statement to, 'Love one another, as I have loved you, in our home, school and parish families';
- Inspire and excite our pupils, encouraging them to be life-long learners;
- Raise aspirations and open children's eyes to a world beyond their immediate surroundings;
- Create an ethos of curiosity where children are confident to question and receptive to diversity of thought;
- Encourage self-belief in an environment that uses growth mindset to shape independent learners;
- Understand the part they play as global citizens.
- Sustain mastery - that is our understanding that nothing is learned unless it rests in pupils' long term memories. This does not happen, and cannot be assessed in the short term.
- Our assessment aims to answer two main questions: a)How well are the children coping with the curriculum content? b)How well are they retaining previously taught content?
Click here to see the school topics that the children study in the year.
Click here to see the details of all topics taught for each year group across the school.
Implementation - General Principles
Our curriculum design is based on evidence from cognitive science. Three main principles underpin it:
- Learning is most effective with spaced repetition
- Interleaving helps pupils to discriminate between topics and aids long-term retention.
- Retrieval of previously learned content is frequent and regular which increase both storage and retrieval strength.
In addition to the three principles, we understand that learning is invisible in the short term and that sustained mastery takes time. Some of our content is subject specific, whilst other content is combined in a cross-curricular approach. Continuous provision, in the form of daily routines, replaces the teaching of some aspects of the school curriculum and, in other cases, provides retrieval practise for previously learned content.
Impact
The impact of our curriculum is that by the end of each milestone (please see individual curriculum subject pages for details) the vast majority of pupils have sustained mastery of the content. That is, they have remembered it all and are fluent in it. Some pupils will have a greater depth of understanding. We track carefully to ensure pupils are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.
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