Curriculum
St Wilfrid’s Catholic Academy Curriculum Intent
As a Catholic school we uphold the values of our faith endowing each child with the knowledge of their own unique gifts and talents. Using both their words and actions we enable our pupils to live out the gospel’s values and values which permeate our community.
We know our children well and aspire highly for their future. We use the National Curriculum of 2014 as our ambitious broad and balanced offer. Using this we will enable all of our pupils, with due recognition of their varying start points, to take their place as an active, contributing member of modern British society.
We firmly believe that reading lies at the heart of a great curriculum and that via reading children experience other worlds, lives and viewpoints. Reading exists at the heart of our school.
We seek to prepare all our children for the next stages in their educational careers as well as to support them as they develop aspirations for their adult life. Their knowledge and skills, their independence as learners and their aspirations as young adults, are built with love, pride and self-belief here at St Wilfrid’s.
St Wilfrid’s Curriculum Implementation
We have worked extremely hard to create a curriculum that is well planned and sequenced so that new knowledge and skills are identified for each age group. We build upon what has gone before, connecting new learning to established concepts whilst also preparing pupils for the learning to come. Thus we encourage both knowledge acquisition and retention in both discrete subject disciplines and via inter -curricular links
There is good attention to what pupils already know with retrieval being a regular feature of our curriculum. Each teacher knows what their responsibility is in relation to the knowledge and skills to be acquired by each age group in each subject. There is a strong ambition for all students to meet the expectations across all subjects.
A carefully crafted, challenging curriculum ensures that all children have equal access to learning throughout and beyond the school. Our practice is based upon recent research evidence and we support the subject and pedagogical knowledge development of our staff as well as our pupils. Everyone at St Wilfrid’s values education knowing that learning is a continuum.
Reading lies at the heart of our curriculum with the intentional selection of texts and authors creating rich cultural capital. We use evidence- based research to develop our focus and explicit teaching of comprehension skills to fully equip our pupils to learn from and through text. Our pupils experience a balanced and cumulative view of reading via consistently high standards of systematic synthetic phonic teaching in our Early Years, to the careful development of fluency within KS1 and the further development of skills and a love of reading throughout KS2.
We believe that family and community engagement is key to achievement and we welcome parental involvement in our happy, vibrant school. The early years’ team focus highly on play-based learning which is informed by early reading and communication experiences, complemented with a balance of adult directed tasks. This approach to teaching ensures high level engagement for all children throughout their early years’ and engages families with the importance and the skill of reading to and with their children.
St Wilfrid’s Catholic Academy Curriculum Impact
The impact and measure of St Wilfrid’s curriculum and school is to ensure children not only acquire and know appropriate age- related knowledge but also the behaviour and learning skills which will equip them to progress through life. In shaping our curriculum in this way, progress can be measured against end of year expectations providing a clear end point for teachers whilst acknowledging the conceptual links already established or being built.
Assessment is used to inform the curriculum design. It asks questions of us as leaders relating to the retention and use of knowledge, to the way in which pupils learn best, helping them to build rich scheme of knowledge ensuring long term storage.
We teach our children, using evidence- based practice, to ensure that we alter their long- term memories and we define progress as knowing and remembering more.
Teachers and staff work hard to plan a broad and balanced curriculum which is expertly delivered to ensure a child’s entire school experience enables them to develop a deep body of knowledge which will see them through to further study, work and a successful adult life in whatever career they choose.
We are proud that children from St. Wilfrid’s Catholic Academy are faith-filled and ready to make a positive contribution to society; have been supported through their transition; have been exposed to a rich vein of reading and vocabulary and have a justified self-belief.
Making our Curriculum Accessible for All
Your child is a unique person. All teachers plan to meet the child’s individual needs through detailed planning and differentiated activities, in a rich environment with adult support. This is in all lessons in our school.
All pupils will receive equal access to a full curriculum that will allow them to build their knowledge and skills, develop cultural capital and achieve their full potential.
At St Wilfrid’s Catholic Academy, every member of the school community is regarded as being of equal worth and importance. Inclusion recognises differences; meeting the needs of individuals and taking positive action, so that everyone has equal access to the educational opportunities offered by the school this includes regular monitoring of individual progress and achievement. Each child is given the support they need to help them succeed across the curriculum and achieve their potential.
For further information about the national curriculum please click on the link below or contact the school office via office@stwilfridsnewman.co.uk .