Curriculum

St Clare’s Curriculum Intent Statement

Long term intention for our children beyond the primary school

The school’s direction stems from its’ mission “I have come that may havelife and have it to the full.”

At St Clare’s, our aims are:

• to provide a Catholic Christian education based on the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, in which Catholic Character Educationunderpin all aspects of school life;
• to provide an environment in which the dignity of each person as a child of God is recognised and developed; and to promote the full potential of each child through a curriculum which develops spiritual, academic, social and emotional growth;
• to provide a curriculum which is enriching and challenging, where children experience the opportunity to learn in a wide range of contexts.

We value every child as a unique individual. We celebrate and welcome differences within our diverse school community.

St Clare's Catholic Primary School is situated in the Bradford East area of the city within the Eccleshill ward. 87.4% of the school cohort live in the 30% most deprived areas of England. Based on the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), the school is ranked 34th out of 160 primary schools (where 1 equals the most deprived).

We recognise the importance,for our children,of developing high quality oracy skills and teach these explicitly through all areas of the curriculum. We teach our children the skills to express themselves orally and provide opportunities for them to develop these skills and become confident young people in the future.

We believe it is necessary to provide our children with a curriculum which provides them with high aspirations and enables them to make a positive contribution to their community and wider society.‘Our Futures’ will provide bespoke career/aspiration workshops for each Key Stage 2 class half termly.

For our children, the opportunity to take learning outdoors is essential for their holistic development. We recognise that our children have a very limited experience of being outdoors. We have invested in training for all staff and are in the early stages of building opportunities for outdoor learning across curriculum areas. We believe that outdoor learning will develop our children’s self-awareness, confidence and self-esteem; encourage collaborative-working and communication skills and provide them with positive health benefits –both physically and mentally –and assist gross and fine-motor development.

Teaching our children how to keep mentally healthy is an important part of our curriculum. We do this by developing a supportive school and classroom climate and ethos which builds a sense of connectedness, focus and purpose, the acceptance of emotion and vulnerability, warm relationships and the celebration of difference. This work begins in EYFS with the identification of difficulties and targeted interventions. We aim to promote staff well-being and actively engage parents/carers to participate and work with us. We explicitly promote the Five Ways to Wellbeing: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Give through discrete sessions.

Implementation Statement

Structural Organisation

Our curriculum is organised in year groups. The key skills and knowledge for each year group have been identified and units of work allocated to ensure progression and full coverage across both Key Stages.

Curriculum Delivery

We aim that our curriculum enables our children leave St Clare’s with a sense of belonging to a tightly knit community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections and become life long learners.

At different points during the year we deliver ‘Theme Days/Weeks’ to focus on specific knowledge and skills. These include Faith Days, Zen Afternoons, Aspirations Week and Social Justice Week.

EYFS and Key Stage 1

The curriculum is designed to build strong foundations for every child’s future and set them up with every chance of success. In the EYFS and Key Stage 1, we recognise children’s prior learning and various starting points, and have created a holistic, developmentally appropriate and play-based curriculum that maximises cross-curricular links and builds life-long, transferrable skills.

We recognise that children have a thirst for new experiences and knowledge and should be provided with opportunities to engage their inquisitive minds. Therefore, we provide vibrant, carefully-levelled continuous indoor and outdoor provision from EYFS to Year 2, to follow children’s interests and to support learners in investigating and developing life-long skills

The curriculum is experience-based and open-ended,with a deep connection to the outdoors, and builds on children’s cultural capital at every opportunity to give them the fundamentals to succeed in life.

During their time in the EYFS and Key Stage 1, children will discover how to be independent, active learners, making links between the many different areas of learning. They will be confident, motivated and engaged by a curriculum that sparks curiosity and resourcefulness, making them proud and confident to be a learner. The will be equipped with the skills and attitude that supports the transition into Key Stage 2and beyond,making them a life-long learner.

Key Stage 2

Our curriculum is taught through whole class lessons which are differentiated appropriately. We recognise the importance for our children to be exposed to a curriculum which embeds high quality oracy skills, outdoor learning and high aspirations and these are, therefore, taught explicitly across all areas of the curriculum.

Below are our overview intent statements for each curriculum area:

Religious Education Statement of Intent

We follow the Diocesan recommended scheme of work, ‘The Way, The Truth and The Life. Through the context of love, our children are taught the teachings of the Catholic faith and the other faiths which reflect our school community.

Catholic Character Education (Virtues)Statement of Intent

Through the teaching of class and whole school virtues, we aim to develop the children’s understanding that virtues are the personal strengths we need so we show Christ in all we do every day. Virtues help us to do what Jesus would do to live the life God wants us to live.

English Statement of Intent

To deliver an exciting, innovative English curriculum which has an emphasis on Phonics, Early Reading and Reading for Pleasure in order to enable and empowerour children's written and oral communication and creativity.

Oracy

Good oracy skills lead to higher order thinking and deeper understanding. Our classrooms are places that are rich in talk, in which questions are planned, peer conversations are modelled and scaffolded and the teacher uses talk skilfully to develop thinking.In all curriculum areas, there are a variety of planned opportunities for children to develop confidence in talk and learn how to analyse and talk about talk. We aim for our children to be competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to others and participating in debate.

Reading

We aim to inspire an appreciation of rich and varied texts and a form a life-long habit of reading widely and often, both for pleasure and information. Children are exposed to text-rich environments around school and quality texts are used to support and inspire learning in non-core subjects, as well as in English lessons.

Writing

We develop writing skills so that our children have the stamina, enthusiasm and ability to write at an age -expected standard and for a range of purposes. To support children in writing, we use a wide range of teaching strategies, including the use of film and imagery, shared-class texts, modelled, shared and guided writing, peer editing and discussion. We encourage pupils to express their ideas, exchange ideas and to develop the use of sophisticated vocabulary, as well as encouraging them to edit and improve their work, as real authors.

Mathematics Statement of Intent

Through a pictorial, concrete and abstract teaching approach using the White Rose Hub teaching sequence and resources, we aim for every child to develop a sound understanding ofMaths, equipping them with the skills of calculation, reasoning and problem solving that they need in life beyond school.

Science Statement of Intent

To develop children's scientific knowledge and understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science, for now and the future.Through the promotion of oracy skills and scientific learning we aim to develop enquiring minds. Our teaching of Science develops the children’s aspirations by making explicit links to careers which use these knowledge and skills.

Non-Core Curriculum Statement of Intent

Our aim is to provide a broad and balanced curriculum by ensuring that our Non-Core Curriculum is delivered through rich, imaginative and cross-curricular learning that will inspire children.

PE Statement of Intent

To develop children’s experiences and enable them to achieve personal successes, the appropriate skills and confidence to partake in all sports.Through our teaching, explicit links are made as to the benefits exercise has on our physical and mental well-being. The children have opportunities to take part in a range of sporting competitions which are run by St Bede’s and St Joseph’s Catholic College.

Computing Statement of Intent

To develop children's experience and understanding of ICT, preparing them for jobs of the future.

PSHCE/SREStatement of Intent

The children are taught through our R.E. scheme and the SRE scheme, Journey in Love the values of loving relationships and the respect we should give to ourselves and others. We recognise the importance of teaching our children how to keep our bodies and our minds healthy.

Impact Statement

All our assessment data is tracked on ‘Insight’. We take into account many different forms of evidence to assess each individual child and make an end of year judgement as to whether they are working towards, at age expected or working at greater depth.

At the end of each term, we compile our evidence and make our judgements as to whether the child is on track, taking into consideration what has been taught so far and a reasoned prediction of what is left to cover to meet end of year expectations.

R.E.

R.E. is still assessed in Levels. For each unit of work there are a number of ‘I can’ statements which are taught and assessed throughout and using a summative task.

English

Phonics: end of Phase assessment in FS2; half termly screening in Year 1 and Year 2.

Reading: Year 1-Year 6 Rising Stars NTS Reading Assessments; termly.

Writing: Year 1-Year 6; termly.

Spelling and Grammar: Year 1-Year 6 Rising Stars GAPS Assessments, termly.

Mathematics: Year 1-Year 6 Rising Stars NTS Maths Assessments; termly.

Non-Core Subjects

The summative assessment of the non-core subjects of our curriculum is skills based. Through each unit of work for History/Geography/Art/Design Technology the children are taught progressive skills whichare assessed at the end of each unit and tracked on ‘Insight’.

The children’s knowledge of each unit is assessed using ‘Mind Maps’; the children record Key Facts, Key Ideas, Key Vocabularyat the beginning and end of a unit of work. The children are encouraged to add to these during the teaching sequence if they acquire knowledge during independent work. The teaching staff make explicit links between prior and new knowledge to keep those connections for the children.