Curriculum

At St. Mary’s we take care of each other, aim high, enjoy learning and achieve success within the family of a Church school.

Our school curriculum encompasses everything your child experiences during their time with us whether this is in the classroom, woodland learning, outside on the playground, through visits and visitors or in the dining hall. We aim to provide a curriculum which…

  • provides exciting and interesting learning opportunities
  • is matched to each child’s individual needs
  • gives opportunities for creative expression
  • encourages health and fitness
  • gives opportunities to develop the skills of enquiry and effective communication

and, most importantly, prepares children for life in an everchanging, modern world.

Through our curriculum we intend to…

  • Enable the children to develop a strong sense of identity and belonging by learning about themselves, where they live, who lives amongst them, the location’s landscape and its history.
  • Support the children in recognising their own talents and, in time, knowing how to use these to build a successful future for themselves.
  • Develop in each child, an understanding of their place in the world and knowledge that they are part of this ‘big story’ of human existence, development and achievement.
  • Expose the children to the opportunities that are open to them as citizens of the world.
  • Encourage children to acknowledge and be inspired by the talents of those who have gone before them and those who are making a difference to the world today.
  • Help children to learn about the diversity of our society and develop a strong respect and appreciation of those around them and of those that have gone before them.

At St. Mary’s we use specialist teaching resources to ensure that we provide high quality teaching and learning experiences for all children.

The Curriculum for Unity School’s Partnership (CUSP) is used for English, Science, History, and Geography. This is an ambitious, evidence-based curriculum with a focus on vocabulary. End points are identified and carefully planned for, building on previous knowledge. Long-term plans comprehensively map out what is taught across the school in all subjects. See the documents below for the content of our different subjects across the curriculum. Subjects are taught individually but links are made across different subjects where appropriate.

We also use Read, Write, Inc for phonics, White Rose for Maths, Jigsaw for PSHE and RSE, Charanga for music, and Real PE for physical education. See the tabs below for more information.

Beech 2 Year CycleDownload
Elm 2 Year CycleDownload
Oak 2 Year Cycle StMDownload

Phonics

Reading

Writing

MATHS

Using the mastery approach, we support our children to acquire a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of mathematics;

  • Through following the three aims of the 2014 National Curriculum, we allow our children to:
    • Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including the varied and regular practice of increasingly complex problems over time;
    • Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, understanding relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language;
    • Solve problems of increasing sophistication, including breaking problems down into simpler steps, and persevering in seeking solutions;
  • By using concrete, pictorial and abstract (CPA) representations of mathematical problems, our children can approach a single concept in multiple ways, moving through each one in any order depending on their need and level of understanding;
  • Rather than simply memorising procedures or facts, we teach our children to understand a concept, as well as be able to show and explain, how and why their mathematics works the way it does.

These are the key features of mathematics in our school:

  • Teachers spend more time delivering each topic, to allow all children to gain a secure understanding before moving on to the next one; (Teaching for Mastery requires each topic to be broken down to small sections that gives a deeper understanding to children and hence more time in each topic)
  • Mixed ability grouping / seating, which allows children to work with a broad spectrum of mathematically-confident peers in their classroom across the school year;
  • Lots of talking about mathematics – children answering in full sentences and providing reasoned responses to questions;
  • Extensive opportunities for problem solving;
  • Mini-plenaries during lessons, where pupils can share misconceptions, pose questions, challenge ideas and make and/or prove conjectures;
  • Free access (for all pupils, in all year groups) to concrete manipulatives such as Dienes blocks, Numicon, counters, bead strings, number lines etc.

This is how it works:

  • Through a Mastery approach, children approach concepts at largely the same level of difficulty. However, teachers will  move children on to more challenging tasks earlier in the lesson, if they feel it is appropriate, to allow them to deepen their understanding;
  • Teachers use correct mathematical language in their delivery of content, employing a ‘word of the day’ or related vocabulary, and displaying these on working walls for children to see and make use of in their learning;  You will see ‘Stem Sentence’ used in the current topic displayed in class room
  • There are frequent opportunities to talk mathematically, both to the teacher and to each other;
  • Using ‘answer, prove, explain’ (APE), pupils are expected to demonstrate their understanding in multiple ways, to avoid the focus being purely on getting the correct answer; We instil children to understand that ‘Answer is just the beginning of the journey’.
  • Children are given the time they need to solve problems (returning to a task in a subsequent lesson, for example), meaning that sessions are more ‘fluid’ than they are ‘compartmentalised’;
  • Teaching assistants (TAs) are sometimes used to pre-teach concepts to targeted pupils ahead of a lesson, to ensure any gaps in learning are filled effectively.

This is what staff do:

  • Plan lessons with a focus on the ‘three aims’ (see above);
  • Reflect on lessons in order to inform next steps for individuals and groups of children;
  • Encourage positive attitudes to mistakes / misconceptions, in discussions and in the learning environment; Children call these ‘Marvellous Mistakes’.
  • Participate in regular book scrutinies, learning walks, planning audits and pupil perception sessions;
  • Engage in collective professional development, both as a school and as part of the Lighthouse Federation
  • Raise the profile of mathematics through Maths Cafés and  STEM week;
  • Encourage parental involvement in their children’s maths journeys through Maths Passports and maths workshops, parent vocabulary booklets.

This is what you might typically see and hear in our classrooms:

  • Open-ended investigations, including low threshold/high ceiling tasks to ensure access for all pupils;
  • Word problems that encourage pupils to ‘find the maths’ contained within; We use the language – ‘What is the story here?’  in our problem solving questions to encourage children to like Maths and see a story in every problem rather than seeing it as a problem to be solved.
  • Pupils talking mathematically, making conjectures and applying reasoning skills to problems;
  • Calculations represented in different ways – missing digit problems, ‘Here’s the answer, what’s the question?’, CPA representations;
  • Paired / group work;
  • Working walls containing relevant examples of work, key vocabulary and photographic evidence;
  • Active maths, where pupils move around the room or work outside
  • Teachers encouraging pupils to discuss and prove / challenge other pupils’ conjectures and ideas.

This is what you will see on our working walls:

  • Topic/Module-specific vocabulary;
  • Stem sentence to do with the current topic;
  • Evidence of mistakes and misconceptions to promote positive attitudes to these;
  • Photos of children working;
  • Number lines – differentiated by year group (for example, 0-100 in KS1, negative numbers/ratio lines in UKS2) and big enough for children to get up and use freely.

This is how we know how well our pupils are progressing:

  • Prompt marking of classwork, with appropriate feedback and ‘next steps’ given;
  • Pupil progress meetings based on formative and summative assessment data;
  • Termly teacher assessment judgements and target-setting;
  • Targeted use of TAs, who make notes about observations of, and discussions with, pupils;
  • Interventions planned ahead.

This is the impact of our teaching:

  • Confident children who can talk about maths in a positive manner;
  • Children displaying a real love of the subject, putting it in their ‘top 3’ lessons;
  • A depth of understanding and the ability to apply this in a variety of contexts.

This is how we use intervention:

  • TAs and Teachers support individuals and small groups, either inside or outside of class, based on misconceptions that have been identified during lessons, promoting the progression of all children rather than some.

This is how we challenge higher attaining pupils / rapid graspers:

  • Always have a deepening activity planned.
  • Encourage them to use higher-order thinking skills to solve problems in a range of contexts;
  • Ask for developed reasoning and justification in support of an answer or solution;
  • Encourage them to support other pupils, to help spot any misconceptions in their working and model the correct steps to solve a problem;
  • Ask them to make generalisations and conjectures, and test (prove / disprove) these.
Guidance For The Teaching Of Multiplication FactsDownload
Addition And Subtraction Calculation Policy July 2022 V2Download
Maths Vocabulary Policy ST BENETS VERSION 2 1Download
Multiplication And Division Calculation Policy V2Download

White Rose Maths – Advice and Guidance for Parents

Art

Computing

Design tECHNOLOGY

Geography

hISTORY

Modern Foreign Languages

Music

PE

PSHE

SCIENCE

religious education