St Augustine's Catholic Primary School

At St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School we aim to provide a safe and secure Catholic environment where all children are respected and nurtured within an ethos based on Gospel values, in which Christ is at the centre of all that we do. Our overarching aim is to provide an environment in which the dignity of each person as a child of God is recognised and developed.

Through a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum we seek to provide inspiring and challenging learning experiences for all pupils irrespective of ability, background, ethnic origin or gender. High standards of teaching and learning ensure that the potential of every child is nurtured and developed; individual needs are identified and addressed and all achievements are recognised and celebrated. We believe that our curriculum should be aspirational, providing experiences and opportunities that will show our children the possibilities that they have in the future.

Our curriculum has a clear purpose, an intent, through which we want to develop the children’s independence and motivation as learners and their sense of responsibility as future citizens. This lies at the heart of all our teaching and learning.

Aims:

• That children develop life-long learning behaviours through independence, collaboration and personal discovery.
• That all children are empowered from the earliest opportunity, to be enthusiastic, self-motivated and resilient learners.
• That through the high expectations of the whole school community, all children are inspired to nurture a passion for learning.
• That all children benefit from teaching that recognises different learning styles and encourages them to be creative.
• That all children benefit from learning within a positive and caring learning environment where all achievements are acknowledged and valued.
• That all children are challenged to reach their full potential and ‘be the best that they can be’

Our curriculum incorporates the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum 2014, used as a starting point from which to embellish and deepen knowledge through experiences and opportunities which best meet the learning and developmental needs of our pupils. We want our children to question learning, to self-organise and feel comfortable enough to take calculated risks.

In Nursery and Reception we follow the Early Years Statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, published in March 2014 by the DfES. This framework specifies the requirement for learning and development in the early years and provides specific areas of learning we must cover in our curriculum. These areas are:

• Personal, Social and Emotional development
• Physical Development
• Communication and Language development
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

The core subjects of the National Curriculum are being followed by every child from Y1-Y6. Continuous assessment is integrated into the curriculum. The Foundation Stage Profile takes place at the end of the Reception year. National tests (SATs) are carried out for Y2 children at the end of KS1 and Y6 children at the end of Y6. A phonic screening check takes place for children in Y1.

At St Augustine’s we aim to foster a love of reading and language in all our children. We teach phonics through the Letters and Sounds Scheme and we use a variety of reading schemes to promote the development of reading fluency and comprehension skills. We recognise that children learn in a variety of ways and aim to develop strategies that allow them to learn in a way which suits them best. We aim to encourage all of our children to enjoy listening to stories and reading for pleasure.

Through our core and foundation curriculum we want to encourage our children to learn in a purposeful way; develop inquisitive minds and have the ability to reflect on and evaluate their own learning. Our Foundation subjects are planned with this in mind. Planning ensures that knowledge and skills are taught explicitly and there are opportunities for links to be made with the different curriculum areas. We aim to cultivate a ‘word rich’ curriculum in which the development of vocabulary is key in every subject and phase.

We have also developed a series of Learning Powers within school that support our children to understand how we learn and enable them to become better learners as a result. Our aim is to create a culture in the classroom-and in the school more widely- that systematically cultivates habits and attitudes that empower young people to face difficulty and uncertainty calmly, confidently and creatively. Children who are more confident of their own learning ability, learn more quickly and more effectively. They concentrate more, think harder and find learning more enjoyable. This is the expected outcome of this approach.

As well as our own staff, we employ some specialist teachers and instructors who support music and physical education. All subject leaders are given training and opportunities to keep developing their own subject knowledge, skills and understanding, so that they can support curriculum development and their colleagues throughout the school.

At St Augustine’s we seek opportunities to extend and enhance the curriculum through a range of activities, such as residential trips, visits, sporting events, visiting speakers and a range of after school clubs.

For more detailed information about specific learning within each year group, please see individual class pages.

At St Augustine's we are currently developing knowledge organisers for all non-core subjects which outline the knowledge, skills and vocabulary that will be learned within each subject.  Below are some examples from KS1 and KS2.  These are used by the children as an outline of what they will learn in each subject each half-term and also serve as a reference point for them at any point of their learning.