Curriculum

Curriculum Policy

St Cecilia’s is a Church of England Primary School where one of our key aims is to ensure that all pupils achieve to the best of their ability.  Ensuring personal development and the well-being of all learners is at the heart of all we do.

The aim of our curriculum design is to inspire pupils to learn.  We nurture academic habits and skills providing a strong focus on the core subjects of reading, writing and maths, whilst ensuring pupils develop subject specific knowledge, understanding and skills within all other curriculum areas. Personal development and creativity are a key feature within our curriculum. We strive to ensure that our pupils leave this school with high standards of academic achievement having progressed well from their starting point.

Our key aim, through a knowledge led curriculum, is to help all of our pupils develop a love of learning which results in a rich reservoir of knowledge from which connections and links between subjects optimise their progress so that they achieve to the best of their ability.

The Core Aims at St Cecilia’s are:

  • To instil in all pupils a love of learning and a desire to grow as a learner

  • To enable pupils to become confident, resilient enquiring and independent learners;

  • To ensure that all pupils have an equal opportunity to take part in the life and work of the school;

  • To develop children’s self-respect and demonstrate respect for the ideas, attitudes, values and feelings of others within our community;

At St Cecilia’s we have core principles of teaching and learning which drive how we plan and teach:

  • We work together to ensure that all learners succeed and that every child is confident, happy and secure;

  • We aim high and value excellence;

  • We aim to teach a curriculum that is rich in subject knowledge and enables the child to make connections and have a strong understanding of the subject;

  • We guide learning through an instructional framework with concrete models that demonstrate excellence;

  • We see skills and understanding as a form of knowledge;

  • We use questions to deepen understanding and we see mistakes as central to the learning process so we encourage resilience and a love of learning;

  • We believe oracy in the classroom and a rich vocabulary should be taught as it supports learning and is the key to unlocking future potential of our learners

  • We enable teachers by providing time, tools and resources to ensure high quality teaching;

  • We strive to make learning activities engaging and real;

  • We believe understanding is built through collaboration between teacher and pupil and among pupils and that dialogue is central to learning;

  • We take time to recognise and celebrate success and praise effort and perseverance;

  • We have a core commitment to equality of opportunity;

 

Assessing Progress

Formative assessment is a key part of lesson structure at St Cecilia’s.  Teachers assess pupil progress through asking questions, as they read and discuss work taking place and ask children to review their learning during the course of the lesson. This style of formative assessment which is also referred to as “Responsive Teaching” during lessons, informs teachers’ planning and helps to identify the next steps in the learning process.

We also place great store by reviewing mistakes – making mistakes is the first step in learning and “fix it” time is planned encouraging pupils to have a greater resilience and a positive attitude to more challenging activities and learning from them.

Teachers identify “next steps” for each child.  Clear learning objectives and success criteria are used in lessons and pupils self and peer assess against these.

Summative Assessment will take place at the end of each key stage - Foundation 2, Year 2 and Year 6. The results show their standard of achievement which can be compared to national figures.

At the end of each school year, teachers write an annual report on each child. Parents are invited to discuss this report with the teacher.