St Thomas a Becket Catholic Primary School

At St Thomas a Becket Catholic Primary School our intention is that our curriculum extends opportunity, raises aspiration, opens children’s eyes to Jesus and God’s love and the world beyond their immediate environment, enabling them to live happy, healthy and productive lives and inspire them to become lifelong learners.

We aim to build resilience and encourage a positive growth mindset amongst our children as it is often through mistakes we learn the most.

Everyone at St Thomas a Becket follows the Eight Learning Characters which encourages our children to:

• Concentrate
• Don’t give up
• Be cooperative
• Be curious
• Have a go
• Use your imagination,
• Keep improving
• Enjoy learning

Our curriculum is focused on the development of children’s knowledge and skills across all primary subjects with the aim of ensuring pupils are ready for the next stage of their learning and lives. Our families are key partners in developing their children’s knowledge and we are grateful to everyone who supports their child’s learning.

We are a reflective school and continually strive to improve our teaching and learning in light of the latest research and this has included a focus on how to improve children’s long-term memory of the knowledge provided in school.

Reading is given a high priority in our curriculum as it is the key to accessing the whole curriculum and making connections within and between subjects. Our learning journeys help to ensure there are links like these and we keep on reminding the children of them.

We are working to make sure that we continue to foster a whole school culture based on a love of reading. This begins in Reception and carries on into Key Stage 1 where we ensure phonics is rapid and robust and that children are reminded of sounds taught so that it is repeated to enable the children to embed them successfully. Staff wish for all children to have exciting reading areas to attract and motivate them to read and foster a love of learning.

In their first year in school our Reception children follow the Early Years Curriculum and develop their knowledge, skills and understanding through a combination of both play-based learning and more focused teacher led sessions. Pupils learn to share, work independently and play with others.

In Maths we follow a mastery approach where all pupils are taught to their year group expectation with challenge for all children, as well as the more able, and support for those who need it.

At St Thomas a Becket we are keen to promote the diversity of life and celebrate difference and promote respect for all. Through our teaching, learning and behaviour expectations, we give pupils the knowledge and understanding of how discrimination and prejudiced behaviour is dealt with, including the prevention of bullying.

We are an inclusive school with a curriculum that matches the needs of individual pupils and resources are deployed where necessary to help reduce individual learning gaps.

Assessment is used to identify children’s progress and find out areas where they are less confident. These assessments inform teacher’s lesson planning. Assessment is carried out across the curriculum through teaching strategies that capture in the class ‘live assessment’ through questioning, instant and regular feedback (by teachers and through peer and self-assessment during the lesson). Children complete summative assessments to show progress in reading, writing and maths. They are also assessed across the wider curriculum through teacher observation, questioning, accumulative formative assessment and summative tests.

Please take look at our individual subject areas for further information on:

• the ‘intent’ of why we teach a subject
• the ‘implementation’ of how we deliver this through teaching strategies
• the ‘impact’ - the outcomes of learning and how we support children to identify their next steps and make the best progress they can to achieve their full potential by the end of each key stage.

We believe our curriculum prepares our children well for their secondary education and imparts the life skills necessary to be confident, resilient, independent and active citizens who contribute positively to society in an ever changing world. We aim to provide our children with the cultural capital they need to understand, appreciate and respect difference in the world, its people and to lead successful lives. This capital is introduced through visits and events such as to our local churches, libraries, ‘Towner Art Gallery’, theater visits and Residential in Year 6 to ‘Fairthorne Manor’ and visitors through our ‘Money Management’ sessions, ‘Flat Stan’ (First Aid skills) and ‘One World Week’.

At St Thomas a Becket Catholic Primary School we continually work towards creating a curriculum that is ambitious and is designed to ensure all children are happy and enthusiastic life long learners.