Whole School Curriculum Statement

Intent – What are we trying to achieve?

We want Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School and Nursery to be a happy and healthy place to achieve and believe.  This core aim permeates our school and its ethos, whether in the classroom or around and about the school.

We aim for all pupils to be inspired to nurture a life-long Love of Learning.  Passion and enthusiasm for teaching and learning and high aspirations is at the heart of every lesson.  

The curriculum at Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School aims to:

• inspire children to develop a love of learning;

• promote the school values of achievement, responsibility, equality, respect, compassion, faith;

• enable children to become creative, enquiring and reflective learners who make progress and achieve;

• build confident and resilient individuals who know how to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives;

• develop aspirational children ready to make a positive contribution to modern British 21st century society;

• nurture respect for and appreciation of all values, cultures and beliefs within the school and the local and global communities;

• provide children with a wide range of experiences to deepen and enrich their learning.

Challenge and fluency are key aspects: we search for purposeful, meaningful opportunities to challenge all pupils, to extend and deepen their learning; and we want our children to be fluent in the skill of reading and in their rapid recall of number facts, for example.

Implementation – How is our vision translated into practice?

At Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School and Nursery, we strive to support all pupils in making excellent progress, whatever their starting point.  We aim to ensure that learning is challenging, exciting and relevant to our children.

Our curriculum is underpinned by the framework of knowledge, skills and understanding outlined in the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage and the National Curriculum 2014. 

We believe that developing, and refining, the school curriculum is an open-ended process and that the content and organisation of the school curriculum should be subject to adaptation and update in order to maintain its relevance and impact over time.  We regularly review our curriculum to ensure it remains broad and balanced, whilst providing academic rigour in all subjects.  Our aim is to ensure that the curriculum is planned, and organised, in such a way that it builds on the knowledge, skills and understanding of all children, whatever their starting points, as they move through each Key Stage.

We aim to enable pupils to develop a deep body of subject-specific knowledge and understanding, whilst developing their spoken and written language skills throughout the curriculum.  We have created a skills and knowledge based approach to subject curriculum organisation and progression.  This ensures coverage of the demands of the curriculum, whilst also providing a cohesive map of the progression across the school.  National Curriculum based, age-related skills, have been carefully mapped as a whole school by subject.  Each subject unit has clearly outlined expectations relating to knowledge, skills and vocabulary that define the intended learning outcomes very effectively.  Class teachers plan the curriculum for their pupils accordingly, adapting where necessary.  Through their learning experiences across the curriculum it is intended that pupils develop the requisite skills to be successful, independent, motivated and resilient learners, fully prepared for the next stage of their education.

EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) follow the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. This consists of three Prime areas; Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language and Physical Development.  These are supplemented by four Specific areas; Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design.  These are taught through a topic-based approach and links are made between areas wherever possible.  Learning is based on real-life experiences where possible.

In Key Stage 1, we operate a highly effective, engaging and popular topic based curriculum model.  This approach gives teachers the flexibility to take advantage of powerful cross-curricular links in order to make the context for children’s learning, and their learning experiences, relevant and exciting.  Classes typically cover a single topic over the course of a half-term.  The subject areas included within any topic are dependent upon the specific topic focus but there will usually be one lead subject and a number of associated subjects taught within a single unit.  Where cross-curricular links are not natural or cohesive, subjects are taught discretely.

Teaching and learning in both cross-curricular and discrete subject are based upon the specific subject skills progressions, ensuring rigour in terms of curriculum coverage and progression.

We believe it is essential that young children continue to access the practical, engaging tasks which we feel are suited to their stage of development and learning styles.  This is particularly relevant to Year 1, where transition from EYFS to the KS1 curriculum is managed carefully to ensure a gradual increase in independence.

In Key Stage 2, our approach differs slightly from KS1.  A topic-based approach continues to provide the opportunity for cross-curricular links, however, a greater proportion of learning is subject skills focussed to ensure that children understand the discrete disciplines of their studies.  The degree of subject specific study increases through the key stage, particularly as children approach the end of their Primary phase, preparing them effectively for transition to Key Stage 3.

Teaching of Religious Education is prioritised within the timetable for all classes, with a dedicated 10% of curriculum time.  We follow the diocesan approved ‘Come and See’ Catholic Primary Religious Education programme for Foundation and Key Stages 1 & 2.  The programme includes specific units focussing on developing children’s awareness and understanding of other major world religions.

Teaching of Maths and English is prioritised within the timetable for all classes with daily sessions across the academic year.  English teaching may be linked to the focus of the class topic (e.g. through cross-curricular writing) or the class text.  In Maths, we follow the Power Maths scheme, aligned to the national curriculum, using high quality text and workbooks.

The acquisition of reading skills is the most important aspect of a child’s development in their early years at school.  If a child is unable to read, they will not be able to access other areas of the curriculum.  Reading skills are an integral part of the majority of learning that takes place in school and therefore we place great importance upon the approaches and methods that we employ in the teaching and development of reading.

Children in EYFS and KS1 have daily phonics lessons following the DFE-approved Read Write Inc Phonics programme.  Where children struggle to master the expectations of each phase of the programme, we put in place regular ‘Catch-up’ sessions to keep them on track.  Pupils in Key Stage 2 may also participate in phonics groups, if appropriate.

In Reception and KS1, we begin by delivering focussed daily Phonics lessons where 'phonics for reading', decoding and comprehension skills are developed.  As children progress through KS1, a whole-class approach to Reading is introduced and this continues into Key Stage 2.  Children are exposed to a wide range of texts, including poems, songs, and non-fiction articles linked to subjects they are studying as well as classic fiction from the past and present day.  As reading fluency is so important in helping to develop comprehension skills, an emphasis in sessions is placed on developing children’s reading fluency; the teacher will model how to read an age-appropriate but challenging short text and children practise reading and re-reading these texts aloud.

To supplement our good practice in the teaching of reading, we use the Read Write Inc reading scheme as the core element of our home/school reading scheme from Reception to Year 2.  Read Write Inc books are organised into bands that are matched to phonics phases and reinforce the sounds children are taught in their daily phonics lessons.  Throughout Years 2 to 6, we continue to use a library of Book Band levelled books as home readers - theselevelled  books ensure a clear structure and progression and align to age-appropriate expectations for each year group.

Alongside these levelled books, KS2 pupils choose books from the school library (which is levelled in accordance with the Accelerated Reader Scheme) to encourage a culture of reading for learning and pleasure.

Children are primarily encouraged to develop a continuous cursive handwriting style.  This approach commences in Year 1 with emergent writers and is developed through discrete and cross-curricular teaching across Key Stages 1 and 2.

Impact – What is the impact of our curriculum?

At Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School and Nursery it is expected that every lesson has a positive impact on every pupil.  We set high targets for pupils based on their prior and on-going attainment to ensure good or better progress.  We take individual needs into account without putting a ceiling on their learning.  We strive to ensure our attainment and progress is at least in line with National expectations and we are vigilant about monitoring pupil progress to ensure high standards.

Pupils should develop good knowledge and skills across the curriculum, in line with the subject milestones, and should be confident to apply this learnt knowledge and key skills in a broad spectrum of school life, personal life and the wider world.  They should be able to demonstrate how to lead a healthy life.  They should have gained a good understanding of the essential characteristics of each subject to take to the next stage of their education and to motivate them in their future career and life.