St Mary's Curriculum

What does learning look like at St Mary's?

Like many schools, this part of the site will show you our curriculum maps, goals for learning and what we expect the impact to be. However, it is also important for you, as families, to really "feel" what it is like to be a pupil at St Mary's. Below are a selection of 1 minute films that showcase a number of key features about the school (the News Report is the exception - but it is really worth a watch!):

What Reception Parents think of St Mary's

Our Intent

The St Mary’s curriculum is the planning that we organise over the year in order to promote learning, personal growth and development.

The St Mary’s curriculum includes the National curriculum for KS1 and KS2 and the Early Years framework for Reception. Our curriculum complies with our duties in the Equality Act 2010 and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations, supporting children with SEND to access learning. We include extra-curricular activities to enrich learning experiences for our children and in addition to our teaching team, we have specialist teachers across the school in PE, music and Spanish.

Our school vision is at the heart of our St Mary’s curriculum, aspiring for all our children to flourish and to empower our children to let their light shine in all they do. We aim for our children to grow into responsible people who can positively contribute to their school community and beyond, as well as work co-operatively with others developing a continued love for learning.

We have shaped and enhance our curriculum in order that it better reflects the opportunities and challenges we face within our own school. To reflect the context of our school, we have designed a curriculum that will enable children to:

Acquire a wide vocabulary and gain a good understanding of words to empower them with the language to succeed in their learning and life
Develop cultural capital experiences and knowledge to create ambitious, capable learners, ready to learn throughout their lives
Develop their mental and physical health to support children to be confident individuals, ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society

Our curriculum acts as a vehicle for building what it is children need to know, but also a tool with which they can better shape their experience, their relationships with others and the future world they will inhabit. At its heart are five elements of practice which will be come together as a set of entitlements for children.

The 5 Elements

Coherence

Credibility

Creativity

Compassion

Community

Coherence: Our curriculum is planned so that it connects in sensible ways, which helps our children to build an understanding of ideas, concepts, chronology and themes. Teachers plan for links in learning, they plan for vertical links (in terms of age progressions), horizontal links (linking subjects across a year) and diagonal links (allowing concepts to make connections across age and subject) these diagonal links lead to our most exciting Curriculum Enrichment Days!
Credibility: Our curriculum is clear about what children will know, what they will be able to do and how these elements link to the national curriculum.
Creativity: Our curriculum offers children a great deal of creativity. Children are encouraged to think about how to creatively link their knowledge, how to present it, how to communicate the knowledge in order to capture the interest of others – all aspects of the creative process.
Compassion: Our curriculum uses a range of experiences to allow children to develop empathy with other points of view and perspectives, and to use that empathy to move into active compassion. Courageous advocacy is solution-focused and its moves our children beyond empathy towards action.
Community: Our curriculum is built with the broader community beyond the school in mind. Whether that takes the form of inviting in community members, building charitable or community links. We may call upon the skills from parents, the community or trips within the local area. Community is a vital component of the cultural capital to our school, so we strive to work in partnership with local organisations, theatres, museums and galleries to broaden children’s experiences. We also plan for children to be of service to our community, and to contribute to shaping a better future.

When these five elements are in place, we see our curriculum emerge in which empowerment is the goal. Empowerment through knowledge, through action, through thought, through language, through play and, critically, through hope.

Our Impact

Pupils increase their knowledge and use of wider vocabulary
Pupils are motivated to learn, enjoy coming to school making strong progress and developing their characters.
Pupils work co-operatively with others
Pupils make a positive contribution to their school and to the wider community
Pupils develop a continued love for learning
Pupils have access to a wide and varied curriculum, allowing pupils to flourish
Pupils form meaningful relationships built upon mutual respect and trust, recognising and celebrating differences
Pupils at St Mary’s grow into responsible people who can positively contribute to their community
Pupils leave St Mary’s happy, confident and ready for their next journey in education.

The school has been inspired by the work of Debra Kidd: A Curriculum of Hope: as rich in humanity as in knowledge.