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Christ Church CE Primary School

'With God,
all things are possible' (Matthew 19:26)

Curriculum

At Christ Church our curriculum offer for all children follows the breadth of the National Curriculum and Development Matters in the EYFS. We continually strive to ensure our curriculum is ambitious and designed to give all learners, particularly the most disadvantaged and those with special educational needs and disabilities, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed as local, national and global citizens.

As a result of the curriculum taught children know more and remember more.

Intent

Rationale

At Christ Church, our vision is firmly rooted in our belief that ‘With God, all things are possible’ (Matthew 19:26). We do this by nurturing, developing and celebrating the God-given talents of each child within a caring Christian community. Our core values, based upon the teachings of Jesus Christ, are closely linked to our vision and underpin all we do. We fully believe that all children, without exception and without exclusion, are loved by God and should feel safe and valued within our school community.

Our Christian values are at the heart of all we do. They underpin teaching and learning and every aspect of daily life in school. Our shared values influence our behaviour and our motives, helping us to aspire to become local, national and global citizens. They are based on our belief that CHRIST is within all of us.

We believe our children have the right to a fulfilled and happy life. We strive to provide every opportunity through an ambitious curriculum that offers opportunities for growth; spiritually, morally, socially, emotionally and academically, so our children experience life in all its fullness.

Our ambitious curriculum has been designed to take account of the legal requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum and the Primary National Curriculum. It exposes our children to enriching experiences, immersing them in progressive knowledge and skills; equipping them with personal characteristics required to succeed in life.

Although we may be a small school, we want our pupils to have big ambitions and high expectations of themselves. We are an outward looking school, with a strong sense of community and we aim to create a curriculum that truly meets the needs of our children. It’s our children’s voices that we want to drive and shape that curriculum; a rich, exciting and balanced curriculum which enables each individual child to develop academically, emotionally, creatively, socially and physically. Our curriculum will enable the children to share ideas, express their opinions and apply knowledge and skills learned in a wide range of meaningful contexts. It will offer opportunities for all children to investigate, question, debate and challenge. It will enable all children to flourish and to be the very best they can be.

Pedagogy

In order to help build a firm foundation for individual growth in all learners, we believe John Sweller’s theory on Cognitive Load being central to developing learning and understanding. We understand that humans draw upon the environment, working memory and long term memory and that working memory can be the bottleneck of our thinking. We understand to overcome the limits of our working memory, the importance of chunking and automating information in long term memory. We are developing our understanding of intrinsic and extraneous load. The key idea of Cognitive Load Theory is to minimise extraneous load and optimise intrinsic load. In keeping with this theory we are developing the key vocabulary through subjects, ensuring to not overload pupils with vocabulary that does not build on knowledge that has already been learnt. Allowing children to recall information from previous learning and develop it through current learning. 

As a school, we believe in using growth mindset alongside cognitive load theory. Our foundations as a school believes deeply in personal growth, creating aspirations and widening horizons for life. One theory that we have introduced is the concept of Carol Dweck's growth mindset. As a school we actively encourage growth mindset, using her theory of “not yet” as a base. This approach is not saved for use exclusively in the classroom, but used throughout all walks of the school day, as it builds resilience in academic and non-academic life, encouraging personal growth. We believe that all members of our community should adopt this approach and understand that they are on a learning curve that will give you a path into the future.

Threshold Topic

At Christ Church, we believe that threshold topics will link together common concepts that run between subjects and through the curriculum. Giving our children the opportunity to access and practice these concepts across all areas of the curriculum, will help pupils to assimilate new information into growing schemas. By presenting new information to students as another example of the threshold topic, it allows them to process information in relation to previously learned knowledge. Again, this is supported by the use of vocabulary in subjects and ensuring learners have a good exposure of vocabulary to enable them to learn, develop and move on.

At Christ Church, we feel that our threshold topic are strongly linked to reading and developing vocabulary. This is based on the trend over many years, of a very low base line within communication and language when entering education. Focussing our curriculum on these areas, we believe, will support our pupils with achieving their potential and make good development.

Enhanced Curriculum

Our enhanced curriculum aims to run alongside and compliments the National Curriculum but aims to broaden the horizons of our children and links closely with our school values.

We broaden horizons by developing global learners, which underpins our values, by planning for opportunities to be aware of the wider world and its current issues. In addition it enables children to understand and respect cultural diversity and differences with an understanding of how the world works and encourage participation in the community at a range of levels, from local to national to global.

We teach the children to make the world a more sustainable place and to take responsibility for their own actions. Some examples of how we achieve this is:

  • International and cultural understanding;
  • Respect for others and our differences;
  • Sustainability and global issues driven by the work of our Eco Team;
  • Opportunities for community participation, locally, nationally and globally;
  • Music and dance celebrations;
  • Educational fieldtrips including to enhancing the arts;
  • Visitors to school;
  • Out of school clubs and opportunities.

Implementation

As a Church of England school, the Christian faith is the foundations of everything that we do at Christ Church. We strongly believe that our personalised PHSE curriculum and our supportive RE curriculum focus on positive well-being, self-awareness, relationships and the wider world. The skills that are taught enable learners to develop skills and understanding which equip learners to make positive choices, widen horizons and create aspirations for life as local, national and global citizens.

At Christ Church, National Curriculum subjects are carefully planned, structured and sequenced to ensure progression across units of work and across year groups or phases and our threshold topics ensure consistency and a drive to support all of our pupils. We achieve this through:

  • Ensuring teachers have good subject knowledge and are supported to maintain and improve this knowledge through coaching, training, observing best practice and undertaking relevant research;
  • Equipping curriculum and subject leaders with the best professional development to help them provide colleagues with support for planning, resourcing and teaching;
  • Incorporating modelling, retrieval practice, prior knowledge and assessment for learning into lesson design;
  • Utilising pre-teaching and the use of practical resources to adapt the curriculum to ensure that all pupils can access the curriculum;
  • Using high quality texts are from Nursery to Year Six to build on the foundations of excellent teaching of phonics and early reading;
  • Prioritising and celebrating reading across the curriculum, providing additional phonological support to older children where needed;
  • Planning progression documents and explicit vocabulary links carefully to ensure that teaching is sequential thereby ensuring knowledge and skills are progressive across the school;
  • Teaching key vocabulary as a primary feature in all subjects; with oracy promoted at every opportunity in the classroom environment.

At Christ Church the physical health and wellbeing of our community is paramount. To promote physical health and wellbeing, a range of extra-curricular clubs gives learners an opportunity to access a variety of sports clubs after school hours. Our PSHE curriculum provides children with opportunities to discuss and learn about personal health, wellbeing, safety, relationships (including anti-bullying work), differences, equality and aspirations. We work closely with communities, businesses and charities within the local area, to provide our children with the very best learning opportunities outside the classroom.

We also ensure our pupils have access to a wide range of opportunities which promote personal safety and pupil voice with all children being actively involved in whole school decision making through the school's Ethos Group, Junior Leadership Team, Attendance Ambassadors and Eco Council. Our curriculum recognises the importance of pupils’ physical and mental well-being in shaping their long term life-style choices. 

In addition we strive to meet the needs of our children by nurturing the whole child. We meet this through the excellent pastoral support given to children so they can access the curriculum is very strong. Various programmes are embedded through the school, such as Roar, that support the mental health and wellbeing of all our children. In addition we have 'The Nook' which offers support to identified children across the school where a need has been identified such as self-esteem, anger management and bereavement. Our close relationship with the church enables 'Here to Listen' sessions to run weekly by members of the church. 'The Power of Yet' is deeply embedded across the whole school and gives all learners the confidence to safely have a go at their work.

At Christ Church we believe in supporting and developing all the needs of our whole community, therefore, Continuing Professional Development for all staff is a priority. In doing this we ensure that staff have the necessary skills and knowledge to deliver the highest standards across the entire curriculum. Music, sports and languages specialists work alongside teaching staff to enhance curriculum delivery. Subject Leaders have the necessary expertise to play a pivotal role in both the design and delivery of their subject area; ensuring a clear progression of both skills and knowledge across all year groups, underpinned by a robust assessment system.

At Christ Church we are committed to working in partnership with parents as we believe that when home and school work closely together we get the best outcomes for our pupils. We continue to nurture these relationships and strive to keep a positive link.

subject time allocations.pdf

Impact

From their different starting points, all children will make good progress academically, emotionally, creatively, socially and physically. Knowledge, understanding and skills will be secured and embedded so that children attain well and in line with their ability enabling them to be fully prepared for transition to secondary school and life beyond primary school.

Pupils will leave Christ Church Primary School:

  • Being respectful, skilful and ambitious with a positive mindset that motivates a passion to learn and to be the very best that they can be;
  • Having a clear understanding of how to be socially, morally, spiritually and culturally responsible on a local, national and global scale;
  • Being good communicators and having the ability to build on the foundations they learnt at Christ Church with a thirst to learn;
  • Being able to make a positive contribution to the community and the world in which they live;
  • Having the ability to form meaningful relationships based upon mutual respect and trust, recognising and celebrating difference, not only within the school community, but in the wider world as well;
  • Developing a sense of self-awareness and being confident in their own abilities.

Junior Leadership Team

What is The Junior Leadership Team?

The Junior Leadership Team is group of students who are selected to represent the views of all pupils and work together to improve their school curriculum and learning journeys. The Junior Leaders are a group of children who meet regularly to discuss issues within the school.

Why do we have a Junior Leadership Team?

  • To improve the school according to the children’s point of view
  • To make sure the children have a platform to voice their opinions about the school curriculum
  • To discuss and raise issues that matter to the children

The Junior Leadership Team meet their subject lead regularly and discuss issues relating to their identified subjects. This can include supporting staff to complete pupil voice, learning walks and completing research for best practice.

In order to join the JLT, students will need to demonstrate leadership qualities, such as being an exceptional role model and an ambassador with the high ideals that Christ Church strives to represent. This includes being proactive, open-minded, collaborative, confident, and willing to take into account the broad range of views of our pupils while keeping learning as the focus of all decision making.  JLT members will also demonstrate a capacity for development and will have opportunities to further those leadership skills. Members will have proven dedicated and passionate about their subject area.

Meet our Junior Leadership Team

Junior Leadership Team (ID 1319)

 Curriculum Plans and Overviews

Curriculum Long Term Plans 2024 -25

Nursery Long Term Plan 2024-25

Reception Long Term Plan 2024-25

Years 1 to 6 Long Term Plans 2024-25

Curriculum Overviews 2024-25
Please click on the images below to learn more about the different subjects in our Curriculum Offer.         

 

 

If you are interested in finding out more about our curriculum, please click here to contact the school office to arrange to speak to our Curriculum Leads, Miss Briggs & Mrs Walters.