Our Lady’s Catholic Primary School is inspired and guided by Jesus Christ. We therefore promote the dignity and wellbeing of every child and ensure that they flourish with us in an enjoyable, safe and enriching environment. We believe that everyone is gifted and called by God to fulfil a service for the greater good of society.

As a result of this, our curriculum is underpinned by the teachings of Jesus Christ and Gospel values which permeate school life and all that we do. Through an engaging, varied yet challenging curriculum we strive for the highest standards of achievement. Furthermore, the development of the whole child is also critical in enabling them to blossom into life-long learners and grow into active, thoughtful and global citizens.

The curriculum we offer incorporates the requirements of the National Curriculum 2014. It also encompasses a range of opportunities and cross-curricular approaches which build on the knowledge, understanding and skills of all children, whatever their starting point. Leaders and teachers have worked collectively to design a coherent curriculum covering all core and foundation subjects. We intend to deliver this curriculum at the highest standards to enable all of our pupils to acquire sufficient knowledge to be successful in their next stage of education and to lay a firm foundation for future learning.

Our Lady’s Catholic Primary School curriculum has high expectations to combine deep knowledge and understanding with transferable skills. It is delivered with the intent of allowing pupils to develop a wide breadth of vocabulary and to provide opportunities for them to apply their knowledge and skills across the curriculum confidently and competently. This is supported by inviting classroom environments which stimulate and engage quality thinking and reasoning. Physical and mental wellbeing are key within our curriculum allowing children opportunities to exhibit spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding. Furthermore, we consider it our duty to foster equality, ensuring our curriculum addresses disadvantage and aspires to close the gap.

Our approach to homework provides pupils with opportunities to deepen their learning and link it what they have already learnt at school.

At Our Lady’s, we use a wide range of monitoring strategies throughout the year to measure the impact of the curriculum content, design, and approach. Leadership at all levels monitors individual subjects: reviewing learning, evaluating pupil voice, providing individual feedback to move practice forward, celebrating positives and highlighting areas of development. Teachers use assessment for learning strategies to evaluate, adjust and maximise the impact of the curriculum on pupil outcomes. Our whole school team strengthens our ethos and vision as we work together to reflect upon our curriculum and share outcomes to drive forward our next steps. In doing so, we take into account the outcomes of various monitoring activities together with available summative assessment information. 

We recognise the importance of English and Mathematics teaching in order to open up other areas of the curriculum and therefore a large emphasis is placed on these areas. In addition to regular English and Maths sessions teachers try to make as many cross-curricular links as possible in order to utilise these skills in a range of contexts. We have held the Quality Mark for English and Maths for the last 10 years.

 

Teaching and learning

Consistency is key to all that we strive to achieve in terms of our curriculum. All lessons have clear learning objectives and success criteria, which are effectively shared and reviewed with the pupils.

A variety of strategies, including questioning, discussion and marking are used to assess progress. This information is used to identify what needs to be taught next.

Activities inspire the pupils to experiment and investigate the world around them and to help them raise their own questions such as “Why…?”, “How…?” and “What happens if…?” Activities develop the skills of enquiry, observation, locating sources of information, selecting appropriate equipment and using it safely, measuring and checking results, making comparisons and communicating results and findings, often using a cross-curricular approach.

Furthermore, we value the importance of scheduling time to review work completed, learning behaviours and targets for all subjects. Therefore, every Monday morning is dedicated to learning review thus ensuring pupils are active and independent learners who can reflect upon how and why they learn. Year’s 2-6 start these in September and Year 1 join after Easter.

Throughout the school children are organised as learning partners and regularly move to ensure that they are given the chance to develop our key learning behaviours, which are: effective investigator, problem solver, creative thinker, information processor, independent learner, reflective evaluator, self-manager, pro-active social thinker and active communicator.

 

At Our Lady’s, we feel that involving parents in their child’s learning is crucial in ensuring that children make the best possible progress. We involve parents in a number of ways:

• Parents' Evenings– Opportunities for parents to come into school to discuss their child’s progress.
• Newsletters – Keeping parents informed about what is going on in school and also providing useful help at home tips to support learning.
• Parent Information Sessions – To provide parents with the knowledge and information they need to support their child’s learning at home.
• Opportunities to volunteer – We welcome the help of parents to support with reading, projects and also when embarking on educational visits.
• The school also has an open door policy and parents are always welcome to come in and meet with class teachers to discuss issues related to their child.

 

Extra-Curricular Activities

Activities are run voluntarily by the staff. The activities are broad and varied and, mostly importantly, for all children. The activities take place on a Thursday afternoon from 3.15pm until 4.15pm in Terms 2, 3, 4 and 5.

 

Expectations of the curriculum, assessment for learning expectations and learning behaviours can be found below as well as the structure of the curriculum.

 

If you have any questions regarding the curriculum we teach please contact the school directly.

Click below to view the outline for the National Curriculum 2014