St Mark's CE Primary School

Curriculum Intent

 In order to deliver the most appropriate curriculum to our children at St Mark’s, we have identified our curriculum drivers. We reflected, as a school, on what our curriculum needed to offer the children in our local community. The following principles underpin the curriculum we provide for our children and they are woven through every subject across the wider curriculum. 

At the heart of our curriculum is the belief that every child can achieve their full potential. We value each and every subject within our curriculum and provide opportunities for children to flourish and develop their individual talents. The team at St Mark's are committed to delivering an engaging, knowledge-rich curriculum which meets the needs of the community whilst creating endless opportunities for our children. Underpinning our curriculum are our four Christian values: Hope Energy Resilience and Optimism.

Our shared value and core belief that every child has a unique contribution to make to the world and their personal talents to be unlocked is underpinned by our vision "Let Your Light Shine." Matthew 5;16.

Our curriculum is rooted in our vision.  Click here to see our vision.

 At St. Mark’s we are very proud of our staff’s commitment and dedication to ensure that all of the children within our care receive a high quality education. We believe in the concept of lifelong learning and the idea that both adults and children learn new things every day. Learning should be a rewarding and enjoyable experience for everyone; it should be fun.

We conduct all our teaching in an atmosphere of trust and respect for all, in line with our distinctive Christian tradition.

We pride ourselves on being a family school.

We recognise that every child is unique and our skilled staff ensure that every child receives a rich learning experience that ensures they reach their full potential, within our Christian ethos of support and high expectations.

Our children are at the heart of everything that we do. We strive to nurture their natural curiosity, creativity and enthusiasm for learning-and vow to hold on to those qualities all the way up to Year 6, through our engaging curriculum.

Through our HERO Learning Powers-Hope Energy Resilience and Optimism, we prepare our children for life-long learning that goes beyond the classroom. We want all of our children to believe in themselves and rise to any challenge they may face.

We live our vision every day "Let Your Light Shine!" Matthew 5:16

Our Curriculum aims to:

• Raise achievement
• Provide an enriching curriculum fit for the 21st Century
• Build up children’s confidence and motivation to learn through the use of a range of learning and teaching styles
• Develop thinking and learning skills
• Enable safe ‘risk taking’
• Promote curiosity and higher order questioning
• Embed key skills in order to prepare children for real-life and everyday situations
• Provide opportunities to apply knowledge and learning in practical ways
• Provide a creative approach to planning and delivery that will incorporate and embed key aspects of the National Curriculum
• Provide enrichment opportunities where learning and teaching can take place beyond the classroom
• Develop social skills and encourage children to become more active citizens within the school community and beyond

Curriculum Implementation

We use our Knowledge Organisers to share the key facts and information required to support the children's learning and understanding of their Learning Journey. These can be found in the Class Pages. Click here to see an example.  You can also use this handy guide to Knowledge Organisers for parents/carers here.

You can see an overview of our curriculum topics here.

Our EYFS Curriculum holds knowing our children at it’s heart. Through high quality interactions in a play based approach we are able to teach the children by facilitating their play.   Our EYFS curriculum is linked to the wider school curriculum, therefore we inspire the children with a project based learning approach, whilst also following their interests. This promotes positive attitudes towards learning, allows children to take ownership of their learning and supports them to make meaningful links in their learning. 

Each Learning Journey takes appropriate objectives from the National Curriculum, broken into key skills acquisition for year groups. Each Journey has a ‘Stunning Start’ to 'hook' the children in to their new learning and ends with a purposeful outcome- a ‘Fabulous Finish’. Throughout the Journey, children are encouraged to think about what they are learning, why they are learning it and how they will be able to apply these new skills in a meaningful context. This is underpinned by a rigorous set of foundational skills such as times tables, phonics and handwriting. From recent reading we would consider our curriculum to have a ‘knowledge-engaged’ approach, where knowledge underpins and enables the application of skill and where both are taught explicitly.

Front Covers  Children will have a front cover at the start of each unit. The front  cover will explain the main learning. 

We are deveoping the use of recap slides to revisit and build upon children's prior knowledge.

Impact

We have agreed "Essentials" to secure consistency across the school. You can see these here. We will monitor the implementation of the curriculum and the quality of teaching and learning through our CPD and monitoring scheduled.

We have summarised our Teaching and Learning Policy as an overview and you can see this here.

Wonder and Wisdom At the start of a new unit, children complete a knowledge mind map-Wonder Wall-these are added to the Learning Journey display.  This is the time when children share their prior knowledge.  decisions around curriculum content. Teachers will also be made aware of current misconceptions and will work on addressing these swiftly.  At the end of a unit, children complete a second knowledge mind map-Wisdom Wall. These are also added to the Learning Journey display.   This is their opportunity to showcase their new knowledge. Again, this is used as an assessment tool so that decisions can be made about future units and which knowledge children may need to revisit at a later date. 

Unit Quizzes Pupils complete a  quiz at the start and end of a unit. This demonstrates which key knowledge has stuck and which learning has been forgotten. This information then informs our next steps in teaching and learning. 
Pupil Conferencing We conduct pupil conferencing regularly and expect children to be able to talk confidently about what they are learning. Leaders use knowledge organisers to support these discussions so that 
key knowledge and vocabulary can be explored. 
Books Children demonstrate their learning and progress through their individual subject books. Children have pride in their learning and books will demonstrate a clear learning journey from the start to the end of each unit.

If you want to find out more about our Curriculum, please contact Miss McKenzie (Deputy Head) via the school.