Curriculum

The St. Faith's School day starts at 8:55am and finishes at 3:30pm.

This equates to a 32.9-hour school week.

Mission statement

"Through the teaching of Jesus Christ and our Christian values, it is our goal to equip each and every child with the skills and tools they need to become considerate citizens in our ever-changing future and to have the confidence, motivation, resilience, ambition and drive to strive for their dreams and become lifelong learners."

Curriculum Intent statement

1. To provide a rich and varied curriculum which has its roots based on our school values of Courage, Trust, Love and Hope and promotes diversity and acceptance of all. To enable children to reach a high standard of literacy and numeracy skills through specific teaching and application of these skills to learning across the curriculum. To ensure staffing has maximum impact and to preserve year group teaching.
2. To provide a challenging curriculum for all learners which is coherently planned and sequenced to enable children to gain knowledge on which to build future learning. The foundation subjects have a key place in the curriculum alongside the teaching of the core subjects. Children are taught in separate year groups for English and maths in Key Stage 1 and for English, maths, science and French in Key stage 2.
3. To allow flexibility of coverage of the prescribed skills and knowledge in the curriculum enabling ownership for both teachers and children across the school. Topics are skill led rather than time led.
4. To use all resources; staffing, rooms, people in the community and visits, to extend learning across the curriculum. To use Lockburn, our environmental area, for core lessons and extracurricular lessons
5. To plan a fun and exciting curriculum which will enthuse the children and ensure active learning. To ensure that topics, hooks and outcomes are key to the planning. To deliver units of work which are memorable.
6. To promote the learning skills of a child at St Faith’s – confidence, good social skills, good communication, risk-taking, problem-solving, emotional resilience, ability to apply skills to new learning and above all a lifelong love of learning.
7. To promote a sense of community for the children with the school, the parents, the church, the community of St Cross and the wider community

 

Curriculum Implementation

• Teachers have good knowledge of the subjects they teach and subject leaders provide colleagues with effective support for planning, resourcing and teaching.
• Lessons are presented clearly with opportunities for discussion to extend thinking, check understanding, identify misconceptions and provide clear and direct feedback.
• Children are taught how their brain works and understand the pathways of learning This knowledge is used to enable children to apply their learning to new situations and to face challenges with strategies.
• High-quality texts are used in all year groups to promote reading skills and to use a high level of vocabulary and extended sentence structures. Phonics teaching has priority in Year R and 1. Reading is promoted within this skill with a focus on confidence and enjoyment.
• Teachers use assessment effectively to check understanding and inform teaching so that knowledge is gained and used. Pupil progress meetings are held every term to discuss the progress of every child and to put in interventions as required.
•  The curriculum is delivered in various ways to capture interest and imagination but the steps of learning within the subjects are carefully planned to ensure that knowledge and skills are gained for children to build on in future learning.

Curriculum Impact

• Children achieve well by developing knowledge and skills as they progress through the school. This is reflected in the results that are achieved at the end of Key Stage 2.
• The children leave the school in Year 6 ready to move successfully onto secondary school.
• The impact of the curriculum is evaluated through end of Phase, end of Year assessments and government tests, through governor visits and by governors asking evaluative questions.