Transforming Lives, Transforming Communities.'
Curriculum Intent
At St Clare’s we want:
- To ensure that our children develop strong reading and comprehension skills and can confidently apply these across the curriculum.
- Our children will read widely, fluently and for pleasure.
- To develop children’s skills in identifying a purpose and audience for their writing and provide opportunities for them to apply these skills in ‘real life.’
- Our children to develop detailed knowledge and skills in all areas of the curriculum and retain this information in their long-term memories. They will connect new knowledge with existing knowledge to develop their understanding.
- To provide a broad and balanced curriculum that supports the needs of all our children at St Clare’s and prepares them for the next stage in their education.
- To have plenty of opportunities to practice using new vocabulary, both in speaking and in writing.
- Parents and carers to become confident in supporting their children’s learning both at home and at school.
- To celebrate the rich diversity of the children, staff and their families and to share this with each other and our local community.
- To follow the guidance of Pope Francis and learn to care for our World in a better way and to share this knowledge with others.
How we will implement our curriculum intent.
Building the Kingdom
At St Clare’s we have worked hard to develop a rich curriculum that meets the needs of all our learners. All children receive a broad, balanced curriculum through both subject and topic work. We believe that the best way to prepare our children for the future is to enable them to acquire knowledge whilst developing skills and understanding. We want our learners to apply skills meaningfully and wherever possible across a variety of curriculum areas, so they develop transferable skills which can be used in any subject. We encourage children to think for themselves, to discuss ideas and to use reasoning when justifying their ideas.
Teachers, as professionals, will elect to use the most appropriate method for the material, age and ability of the class. Individual, group and whole class teaching will be in evidence throughout the school. The features common to all approaches will be positive encouragement of effort, work that will stretch but not frustrate, recognition of achievement and work programmed to develop individual children and help them achieve their full potential. Our teaching style takes account of the learning styles of the pupils and caters for the full range.
As we are moving towards a one-and-a-half form entry school, we currently have some mixed age classes, we run our themes on a two-year cycle, so no child repeats a topic. Each topic is run across the three classes in a 'Phase', so the children in Years 1 & 2 do the same topic together, as do those in Years 3 & 4 and in Years 5 & 6. There is an overview of our topic cycle below. Foundation Stage (our Nursery and Reception classes), run a different curriculum to the rest of the school. These wholes school themes are based on Catholic Social Teaching.
Building the Kingdom
At St Clare’s we have worked hard to develop a rich curriculum that meets the needs of all our learners. All children receive a broad, balanced curriculum through both subject and topic work. We believe that the best way to prepare our children for the future is to enable them to acquire knowledge whilst developing skills and understanding. We want our learners to apply skills meaningfully and wherever possible across a variety of curriculum areas, so they develop transferable skills which can be used in any subject. We encourage children to think for themselves, to discuss ideas and to use reasoning when justifying their ideas.
Teachers, as professionals, will elect to use the most appropriate method for the material, age and ability of the class. Individual, group and whole class teaching will be in evidence throughout the school. The features common to all approaches will be positive encouragement of effort, work that will stretch but not frustrate, recognition of achievement and work programmed to develop individual children and help them achieve their full potential. Our teaching style takes account of the learning styles of the pupils and caters for the full range.
As we are moving towards a one-and-a-half form entry school, we currently have some mixed age classes, we run our themes on a two-year cycle, so no child repeats a topic. Each topic is run across the three classes in a 'Phase', so the children in Years 1 & 2 do the same topic together, as do those in Years 3 & 4 and in Years 5 & 6. There is an overview of our topic cycle below. Foundation Stage (our Nursery and Reception classes), run a different curriculum to the rest of the school. These wholes school themes are based on Catholic Social Teaching.
| Cycle 1 | Theme | Cycle 2 | Theme |
| Autumn Term (2019) | Life and Dignity of the Human Person | Autumn Term (2020) | Call to Family, Community and participation |
| Spring Term (2020) | Option for the poor and vulnerable | Spring Term (2021) | Dignity of work |
| Summer Term (2020) | Care for God’s creation
(Stewardship)
|
Summer Term (2021) | Solidarity |
The theme of ‘rights and responsibilities’ will be split over all the themes and work from the UNICEF charter on the rights of the child to be introduced from Summer 2020.
- The termly theme gives the opportunity to really think about the purpose for learning and links will be made in most, if not all subjects every term. Children and staff will be part of an immersion event for every theme, this reflects the words of Pope Francis – See, Judge, Act. We want children, families and staff to deeply understand the context for their teaching and learning and aim to develop opportunities for this over the coming year.
- Each term all aspects of the National curriculum will be covered in all classes. Some subjects will have a half term focus rather than a full term.
National Curriculum Links - to find out more please click on the following links.
