Curriculum Overview

St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School

Vision:

At St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School, we are committed to teaching a broad and balanced curriculum that is stimulating, motivating and encourages pupils to become independent and aspirational learners. We hope to instil a love of learning that promotes enquiry and encourages pupils to apply themselves to the best of their ability. We place a high value on vocabulary, knowledge and skills thus ensuring a holistic approach to learning.

At St Augustine’s RC Primary School, we strive to inspire, engage and nurture each unique child so they grow to become resilient, confident, curious and self-assured individuals. We endeavour to work seamlessly together to ensure every child reaches their full potential in a warm and caring emotional, indoor and outdoor learning environment. This reflects our goal for every child to grow as competent, independent learners.

Our curriculum is designed to:

Enable pupils to build respectful relationships with their peers, school staff and the wider community.
Nurture resilience in learners so that they may persevere when things get tough.
Challenge pupils to take responsibility for the choices that they make within their learning and social interactions.
Develop and strengthen pupil’s literacy skills so that they are able to effectively speak, listen, read and write. We believe that these skills are fundamental in accessing lifelong learning.
Support pupils in becoming competent mathematicians who can utilise their subject knowledge in everyday life.
Explicitly up-level pupil’s vocabulary in order that they can access all areas of learning with a reduced cognitive load.
Offer pupils the opportunity to learn about a breadth of subjects, gradually deepening their understanding of key concepts within and across year groups, through carefully planned teaching sequences.
Support pupils in achieving the highest possible standard from a range of starting points we ensure learning carefully matched pupil’s needs.

Intent:

At St Augustine’s our curriculum is broad and literacy rich. Schemes of learning are underpinned by evidence, research and cognitive science. Blocks of learning are deliberately sequenced for robust progression. There is an emphasis on oracy and vocabulary acquisition, retention and use to break down learning barriers and accelerate progress. A rich diet of language and vocabulary is deliberately planned. Teachers are advocates of beautiful reading.

The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework (EYFS) sets out the learning and development stages for children as they grow from birth to five years. For those working in the early years -whether in a nursery, pre-school, a childminder or in a reception class in school – the EYFS outlines what they need to do to support your child. Please see our dedication EYFS page.

From Year 1 to Year 6 for the majority of subjects (History, Geography, Science, Art and Design, Design and Technology, Music and English Reading and Writing), we have implement the Unity Schools Partnership CUSP increased frequency curriculum model for majority of subjects. The model written and produced by Alex Bedford of Unity Schools Partnership.

For Religious Education, The Lighting the Path schemes of learning is followed across school.

For Maths, to develop the fundamental maths skills of fluency, reasoning and problem solving we follow White Rose Maths and NCETM schemes of learning to support teaching and learning across school.

Kapow is used for our Computing curriculum and PE Passport is implemented for the teaching of PE.

For RSE and Health Education and PSHE, we are following the TenTen programme and My Happy Mind across school.

Implementation:

In our lessons:

Specific skills are discreetly taught and practised so that they become transferable.
Lessons activate prior learning, build on skills and deepen knowledge and understanding.
Learning, vocabulary and content is cumulative; content is learned, retrieved and built upon.
Substantive knowledge and concepts are mapped out in each subject area; key knowledge is revisited and reinforced.

St Augustine’s has a coherent school wide model of pedagogy across all subjects. We follow a responsive teaching model with our CUSP lessons incorporating 6 components:

Retrieve: Remember more, know more, learn more. Connections are made to to prior learning.

Explain and Model: The teacher models subject matter and worked examples clearly and prompts discussion.

Check for Understanding: Effective questioning to assess understanding and identify misconceptions, accurately; provide clear, direct feedback; responding and adapting their teaching as necessary. Children attempt tasks, practice is enabled.

Applied Learning: Provide a challenging, ambitious curriculum for all learners. Through a united approach and high expectations, all classes promote a culture of: high challenge, low threat.

To find out more information about our curriculum, please see our year group overviews below and the subject specific pages on this page. Please also see our dedicated SEND information page.

Curriculum Overview

Impact:

At St Augustine’s Primary School we strive for all pupils to achieve their absolute potential, by having high expectations across all aspects of school life.

We embrace the ethos and beliefs of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Every child has the right to an education (Article 28) and the right to develop their talents (Article 29). We value every pupil and the contribution they have to make. As a result, we aim to ensure that every child achieves success, regardless of background or barrier to learning, reaches their full potential.

Our children acquire knowledge and skills preparing for their next phase in education. They leave St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School knowing love and being able to show it to others.

To see our curriculum in action, please click on the images below and our dedication subjects and class pages.

Click the image to see our work: