St. Urban's Catholic Primary School, a Voluntary Academy

CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION:

What do we do to achieve this?

For our children to flourish we need to provide a curriculum and learning opportunities that are inspirational to them. We want a curriculum that focuses on the child as a learner, allows breadth and depth of learning and offers challenge and enjoyment. In order to achieve this, we adopt a thematic based curriculum that has both spirituality and academia at its heart.

Our curriculum is underpinned by Character Education, encompassing Moral, Civic, Performance and Intellectual Virtues – these Virtues are our drivers.

The curriculum, based on three broad themes, has Virtue Drivers at their heart. There are clear links for cross curricular work and writing tasks will be developed more throughout the topic work.

 

The Three Themes

The school year will operate across three terms with each term having an overarching theme. This will enable the topics and lessons that are then taught to have more cohesion between them for two reasons. Firstly, they will have the same theme at the heart of the teaching. Secondly, they will be able to be more closely intertwined for cross-curricular writing and work. Each theme is rooted in Virtues. These Virtues shape the teaching and learning values of the term.

Term 1 Driver ~ Moral Virtues ~ Our Wonderful World

Term 2 Driver ~ Performance Virtues ~ Inspirational and Infamous Individuals!

Term 3 Driver ~ Civic Virtues ~ Endangered Environment

The Intellectual Virtues are woven throughout the entire curriculum – critical thinking, independence, curiosity, reflection and resourcefulness.

The cross-curricular approach aims to enable the children to become more immersed in the world around them; to understand what has shaped it both naturally and through human involvement.  We want the children to understand how they can affect the world they live in both locally and globally.

With a spiral approach too, to the curriculum, the topics taught in each term allow a depth and breadth of learning to take place through the year and on into the next year group. This will enable pupils to not only learn but revisit key skills across a wide-ranging curriculum.

Our planning, that leads to quality teaching and learning opportunities, should always be best suited to our learners, their interests and needs.

 

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." Dr. Seuss

Reading is the single most important key to successful, enjoyable learning. We have adopted the Floppy's Phonics Scheme, a systematic, synthetic phonics programme used consistently to support early reading success.

In school R.E. has the status of a Core Subject and helps to drive a value enriched curriculum. We use the Diocese of Leeds endorsed scheme 'The Way, The Truth and The Life' to support teaching and learning in R.E. In Year 3, 4 and 6, the children are given the opportunity to prepare for and celebrate the Sacraments of Reconciliation, First Communion and Confirmation respectively.

 

IMPACT:                                                                                                                                                                                                     

We continuously review and evaluate review the effectiveness and impact of the curriculum. We listen to the children’s feedback and try to make the necessary amendments or enhancements.  The children particularly enjoy school trips and after school activities. We are building more enrichment activities into our curriculum as we know that the children are benefiting from the experiential learning opportunities provided through such activities.