What does your child learn at school each day? Find information about our curriculum subjects here.
Our curriculum is made up of ‘The National Curriculum 2014’, the ‘Hertfordshire Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education’, ‘Collective Worship’, ‘Sex and Relationship Education’, ‘Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship Education’ (as a cross curricular context) and ‘Environmental Studies’.
The National Curriculum 2014 is made up of the following subjects;
Core subjects: English, Mathematics and Science.
Foundation subjects: Art and design, Computing, Design and technology, Languages (Spanish, German and French are taught in school), Geography, History, Music and Physical Education.
Following the introduction of the new National Curriculum from September 2014 we are now in the
process of beginning to implement a significant and on going review of our curriculum.
At St Mary’s subjects are taught and timetabled explicitly to enable children to learn specific knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes, which can then be applied and enhanced via identified cross curricular projects.
Learning is enhanced by cross curricular projects that will group areas of learning across a range of subjects together. Each project has a launch event designed to ‘Inspire and Motivate’ as phase 1. This is followed up by phase 2 in which children ‘Learn Specifics’; skills, knowledge, understanding and attitudes. Phase 3 gives children the opportunity to ‘Apply and Share’ their learning in innovative and creative ways to a range of real audiences.
The children are expected to attend school for 190 days per year (excluding sickness, doctors appointments, authorised holidays etc). 23½ hours per week are spent learning the National Curriculum Subjects and RE, of which at least 1 hour a day is spent focusing on English and one hour on Mathematics.
Full details of the National Curriculum can be seen by clicking on the button below;
Teachers work together as year group teams to plan exciting, challenging and creative learning activities for their children. An ‘Annual Cross Curricular Project Map’, a ‘Curriculum Project Overview’, and a ‘Curriculum Planning Timeline’ is developed by each year group for each term or project. An annual long term ‘Subject Curriculum Map’ provides an overview of when different units of work will be taught in each subject over the four years of Key Stage 2, this is accompanied by a ‘Subject Skills progression map’ for the foundation subjects. Medium term planning includes a detailed break down for each unit of work including; expectations, objectives, resources, and sequences of related lessons. The short term plans are the responsibility of each class teacher and are developed to meet the needs of their particular class including lesson by lesson; objectives, success criteria, context, related tasks and clear differentiation strategies to meet the needs of all children.
Please click on the buttons below to see examples of the different types of planning we are developing. Please note that the examples given are all in draft format following the introduction of the new National Curriculum from September 2014;
Copies are available for all year groups and all subjects, but are likely to change under on going review. Please contact your child’s class teacher if you would like to see further examples relevant to your child’s current year group. (Please note that in time all relevant plans will be published on our web site).
Please click on each button below to open up in a separate window a copy of the relevant document (Please note if you have a slow Internet connection it may take a minute to download)
At St Mary’s we have created our own bespoke curriculum that takes into account our own needs and interests, so do not follow any complete curriculum scheme. We do use and follow some schemes to help supplement our work where we deem them suitable to help accelerate children’s progress;
English; ‘Accelerated Reader’, ‘Read, Write Inc; Spelling’ and ‘Spellodrome’
Mathematics; ‘Headstart Assessments’ and ‘MyMaths’.
Science; ‘Rising Stars; Switched on Science’
Please click on the links below to access further details;