Curriculum

 We align to our Trust’s Curriculum Design and Principles. Read more about these here.

Our curriculum follows a 3-D model, allowing every child to discover, develop and deepen their understanding within and across units of learning.

‘The curriculum at Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School is intended to provide every child in our care, thoughtfully-sequenced, and engaging learning experiences. This learning journey will allow all children to achieve distinguished academic standards, fulfil their maximum potential and become positive contributors to the world around them’.

Years One to Six have four themes over the course of the year, either a history or geography focus. Key concepts are mapped out within and across each year group so that children are able to deepen their understanding. A breakdown of themes and concepts for each year group can be found below.

We aim to provide an inclusive “balanced and broadly-based curriculum” which promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. To enable this to happen, our intent statement and our mission statement ‘Together we live and learn; we play and pray’ work hand in hand.

Our curriculum has been coherently planned and sequenced so that pupils gain cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning and employment – new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before and towards clearly defined end points. This includes and reflects our local context and our diverse nature and will address typical gaps in pupil’s knowledge and skills. Appropriately selected concepts will be re-visited year-on-year to further embed children’s knowledge and understanding.

The design of our curriculum comes from a culmination of the following:

• Extensive research into successful key principles of learning and curriculum areas
• What our children want to learn
• The opportunities for our children to learn about
• The want (and need) to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum
• How our school and its locality can help to support the children in their learning  
• How we can develop our children as learners in all areas, not just core subjects
• Meeting as a staff with the aim of ‘taking the curriculum we deliver in a different way’
• Curriculum meetings, staff CPD, support from St John the Baptist Multi-academy Trust
• Focussing on skills progression and mapping these out within and across the year groups

Subjects have been mapped out across the school from EYFS to Year Six to enable:

• Progression to be easily seen between year groups and stages of the year (in both skills and knowledge)
• The opportunity to cater for all styles of learners and be inclusive of all of our children
• A broad and balanced curriculum to be delivered
• Enriching and engaging opportunities to be planned alongside everyday teaching and learning
• High expectations to be consistent across all year groups and for all learners
• Opportunities to revisit key concepts and build on the children’s knowledge of these. Appropriately selected concepts will be re-visited year on year to further embed children’s knowledge and understanding.
• Opportunities to make use of and learn about our local context and will address typical gaps in pupil’s knowledge and skills.
• The opportunity through monitoring and feedback to adapt our curriculum provision to ensure it continues to meet it’s intent.

With our curriculum implemented we will achieve our ethos of ‘together we live and learn; we play and pray’.