Our Curriculum

In September 2014, the DfE published a new National Curriculum.

The website below outlines all the objectives to be covered in each year group, in each curriculum area.

http://www.primarycurriculum.me.uk/

Inspiring ‘Respect, Excellence, Happiness, Resilience, Compassion and Faith’ in a happy and safe learning environment

All children and their families are invited to be part of our wonderful school community.

St Winefride’s is an inspirational and inclusive school where we all love to work, learn and grow together in all aspects of school life whilst following in the footsteps of Jesus. We strive to nurture the gifts and talents of all learners and provide the highest quality of education within a warm, welcoming and supportive Catholic ethos; encouraging all children to reach their full potential.

Through creating a stimulating learning experience and promoting positive mindset and an aspiration for achievement and excellence, our children will become confident, independent and resilient. They will develop essential skills alongside essential knowledge to equip them to grow and thrive in an ever-changing world.

St Winefride’s is a safe place where all learners and stakeholders are happy, safe, secure and challenged in an environment where the Gospel values are at the centre of everything that we do.    

Our Core values of ‘Excellence, Respect, Happiness, Resilience, Compassion and Faith are lived out within our school and wider community where we come together, daily, to ‘Learn, Laugh, Listen. Live and Love’ in the presence of Jesus.

 

Our Curriculum

At St Winefride’s Catholic Primary School, we are committed to providing a curriculum which is broad, balanced, exciting, and challenging and provides our pupils with opportunities to gain essential knowledge, skills and understanding. We intend that all children enjoy their learning; achieve their full potential and become independent life-long learners. We strive for excellence in all aspects of school life, motivating every child to achieve more than they thought possible. Our curriculum will nurture curious minds; stretch the imagination; challenge thinking and provide opportunities for every child to discover their talents. We are committed to high quality education in a fully inclusive environment with equal opportunities for all where children feel safe to try new things and where celebrating achievement is of paramount importance. Our core values are at the heart of everything that we do.

Through clear strategic planning, our curriculum provides not only memorable experiences but is rich in opportunities from which the children can learn and develop transferrable skills. The acquisition of knowledge and the development of skills is carefully planned to create a purposeful and exciting learning experience for every child with cross curricular links across subject areas. Children are encouraged to know more and remember more through the consistent application of the school’s strategies evident across the curriculum areas (such as ‘review and do’ ‘mini plenaries’). Sticky six happens every Friday and allows the children to recall knowledge and skills previously taught in all curriculum areas.

To ensure that progression and balance is maintained, the programmes of study outlined in our long-term plans are developed into medium term plans which clearly highlight the learning objectives and assessment opportunities. There is a clear focus upon the acquisition and development of vocabulary in all curriculum areas.  Weekly planning is then differentiated to the needs of each class, linking to prior learning, resourced and includes questioning prompts to promote challenge as well as to scaffold and has a clear vocabulary focus. Teachers plan and tailor units of work and lessons to address the specific individual needs of pupils so that all pupils can reach their full potential regardless of their starting point. Quality first teaching is provided to ensure that accelerated progress is promoted in each lesson. Our marking policy is implemented consistently and provides opportunities for children to reflect on their learning and think deeply and carefully about their feedback and how they can develop their learning further.

Children will leave St Winefride’s Catholic Primary school ready for the next stage in their learning at secondary school. The curriculum will have provided a range of knowledge and skills to support them in their future endeavours. Our children will be able to work collaboratively with their peers and independently as inquisitive learners who are motivated to excel and who have a thirst for learning. Our learners will have a strong desire to strive for excellence; embrace challenge and to be respectful and resilient learners. Our curriculum design will enable our pupils to grow and develop as good citizens and demonstrate a true appreciation for others. Our children will be respectful and will show tolerance and acceptance to those from different faiths and backgrounds.

For more detailed and comprehensive information about our curriculum please visit our curriculum pages where you will find further information.

At St. Winefride's, we believe that children learn best in a calm, safe, stimulating and encouraging environment where they are invested in their learning, inspired, motivated, challenged and supported and where achievement is recognised and valued. We believe real, first-hand experiences are important in supporting excellent learning. We dedicate time to evaluate our curriculum to ensure that it is balanced, broad, exciting, and challenging. We are committed to making refinements across the curriculum to provide high quality teaching and learning to all our learners. We are committed to the growth of all in our school community encouraging them to strive for excellence, happiness, respect, resilience, and compassion. 

Religious Education – At St. Winefride’s, our priority is to nurture growth in the Catholic faith as a living reality through enabling a variety of religious experiences for all members of the community and by following ‘The Way, the Truth and the Life’ scheme of work for Religious Education. We aim to ensure that all children gain essential knowledge of the Catholic faith, with an inclusive awareness of the diversity and the commitment of individuals in their personal lives. Children experience learning in Religious Education in creative and innovative ways, embedded within the Liturgical Year of the Church.  They have a strong understanding of the mission and charism of St. Winefride’s: to be a beacon of Catholic education and values; shining their light within the guidance of our core values of Excellence, Happiness, Respect, Resilience and Compassion and rooted in our Faith in the person and presence of Jesus Christ.

Understanding is gauged for individuals and learning is supported and challenged according to needs; progression is ensured through both the scheme and in regular opportunities for personal and collective reflection, prayer, and participation in formal liturgies of the Church. Our annual ExploRE Week provides a rich experience of a range of world faiths. Our purpose is to ensure that every child at St. Winefride’s enjoys exploring their personal faith and finds joy in expressing this through the rhythms of the Church’s Liturgical Year and in Religious Education lessons. They reach richer depths in this expression through the permeation of Religious Education throughout every aspect of school life. Each child will gain an appropriate level of religious literacy and will therefore be able to express their own understanding of the Catholic faith and their personal spirituality successfully, using this knowledge to discern the ways in which God is calling them to live life fully as a unique gift from God.

RHE (Relationship and Health Education) - Here at St. Winefride’s Primary School, our aim is to support children through their physical, emotional, moral, and spiritual development in accordance with the teachings of the Church, our school ethos and our Christian beliefs. We endeavour to ensure that our children grow up as informed and responsible adults who understand the importance of family values. Through the teaching of RHE (Relationships and Health Education), we encourage our children to be sensitive to the different needs of individuals in respect of their different abilities, personal circumstances, sexual orientation, faith or culture. Our children are encouraged to make practical judgements about the right choices to make in particular situations, enabling them to become active and healthy citizens, contributing positively to society.

Phonics - At St Winefride’s Catholic Primary School, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle systematic phonics programme, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read, spell and write, as they move through school. As a result, all our children can tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. We also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects. We are passionate about reading and encouraging our children to have a real love for reading. Reading for pleasure sessions is timetabled in all classes.  Reading clubs are offered to children as an extra curriculuar activity also.

Reading - At St Winefride’s, our priority is to nurture a love of reading where children become confident, independent, and lifelong readers. We teach children essential skills so that they can read accurately, fluently and with understanding.  We recognise that reading is the key to all learning, and it is our aim to ensure that all children succeed in this area. We have high expectations of our learners and encourage children to read regularly and widely for the purpose of education and for their enjoyment.

 At St Winefride’s, we provide a text rich environment to encourage a positive culture of reading throughout all classes and promote reading for pleasure.  Children are exposed to high quality texts by a range of authors in their English lessons, shared reading sessions and guided reading sessions.  Within English lessons and using Pathways to Read and Pathways to Write, our children read a range of literature that is linked to learning in other areas of the curriculum or is topical (For example: Black Lives Matter). Children read daily, and we encourage and support parents with reading at home.

Children enjoy listening to challenging texts through Storytime. Through high quality teaching and learning experiences, we develop children’s skills and competence so that they are fluent readers who can read to learn. 

Writing - Our aim is to foster confident, creative and competent writers who write with a purpose and are aware of their audience. At St Winefride’s, we foster an ‘I can’ culture where all learners attain and progress. Using Pathways to Write, we ensure full coverage of essential knowledge and skills of the National Curriculum, for all learners. Our ‘Pathways to Write’ programme follows a Mastery-Learning model. Key skills are taught and repeated; there are multiple opportunities throughout each unit to use and apply the skills until they can be mastered fully. Within each sequence, there are many opportunities for writing. At St Winefride’s, we create meaningful opportunities for the children to write including whole school projects which shows progression of writing.

Writing is inspired through the use of high-quality texts – fiction, non-fiction and poetry as well as using current affairs to enthuse purposeful writing. Through teaching of writing, we promote the accurate use of language, grammar and spelling.

At St Winefride’s, transfer of knowledge and skills learnt in English across all areas of learning, is of paramount importance. 

Maths - At St Winefride’s, we believe that our pupils deserve a creative and ambitious mathematics curriculum, rich in skills and knowledge, which ignites curiosity and prepares them well for everyday life and future employment. We use WhiteRose materials along with other high quality mathematical resources from NCTEM and the Maths mastery Hub, Maths for Life, creating a mathematical curriculum which means the needs of all learners.  Our mathematics curriculum gives our pupils the opportunity to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. We teach our children to reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, exploring relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language. With confidence, we want our children to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and preserving in seeking solutions. Our learning environment allows children to communicate, justify, argue and prove using mathematical vocabulary.

Our mathematical curriculum provides challenge to all pupils with an understanding that mistakes develop our thinking and our learning. We foster an ‘I can’ culture and promote a positive mathematical mindset in our pupils. Through teaching and learning in Maths, we endeavour to develop character of our pupils, including resilience, confidence, and independence, so that they contribute positively to the life of the school, their local community and the wider environment.

 Science – Our fun, stimulating, engaging, and challenging curriculum is developed and designed by the staff to ensure that high quality Science education provides the children with the foundations and knowledge and the opportunity and passion to question and understand the world around them. The children can acquire and increase their key scientific knowledge and vocabulary through practical experiments, using equipment, conducting experiments and explaining concepts confidently.

The curriculum fosters the child’s natural curiosity, but excites, stimulates, and develops a healthy curiosity in children about our universe while promoting respect for the living and non-living.

Here at St Winefride’s the children will have a wide range of practical experiences to develop their investigation skills, make mistakes, enable them to become more confident independent leaners.

The children will be exposed to a range of methods to communicate their scientific information and present it in a scientific manner. Working Scientifically through different types of science enquiries offers opportunities for children to ask and answer questions, make observations, and investigate ideas about the world around them.

The curriculum nurtures a culture that everyone is a scientist, whilst providing opportunities to appreciate ‘Scientists at work’ and inviting scientists into school to work with our scientists.

History - Here at St. Winefride’s Primary School, it is our aim to instil a love of history in all our children through the delivery of a fun, creative and intriguing curriculum that stimulates the children’s interest and understanding about the life of people who lived in the past and its impact upon how we live today. Through their learning, our children are made aware that they themselves are makers of history.  We have designed our history curriculum to develop the essential knowledge and understanding of Britain’s history and that of the wider world, with a particular reference to our local area. This enables our children to value their own and other people’s cultures. To enrich the learning of history at our school, we intend for our children to have real life experiences by organising educational trips, inviting visitors into school and commemorating important and special events.

DT - Our Design and Technology curriculum intends to develop children’s academic and practical skills by inspiring them to solve problems based on initial exploration of designers and their products, leading to develop purposeful products based on real life contexts. We encourage creative and imaginative thinking through functional, resourceful and innovative experiences. Our children become independent risktakers who can also work well within a team, sharing their thoughts and ideas fairly. We ensure a creative yet challenging curriculum with a clear development of skills and knowledge to design, make and evaluate products, where the children consider their own and others’ needs, wants and values. The skills and techniques developed through Design and Technology are of great importance in our everchanging technological world to ensure that children are equipped for the next stages in their lives.

ART - At St Winefride’s, Art and Design develops creativity, sets challenges, engages and inspires our children. Our curriculum equips the children with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft, and design. The children at St Winefride’s are encouraged to express themselves as artists through imaginative design and creation. Our inclusive ethos ensures the needs of every child is met, enabling them to progress and achieve within the subject. The children are exposed to a range of media inspired by a range of artists, craftsmen, and designers, with a clear focus on the visual elements of art. Additionally, as they learn about the history, roles and functions of art, they can explore the impact that it has on contemporary life and that of different times and cultures.

We feel that Art and DT are best delivered in ‘block’ form, with the pupils being taught intensively over the period of an ART or DT week. The advantage of this, is that the learning of knowledge and skills is of high quality and the children are committed to the roles that they are given throughout the week. Pupils can work on their project throughout the week and the knowledge and skills which they acquire is are progressive and retained in their long term memory.

Physical Education - At St Winefride’s, we strive to create a culture which aims to inspire an active generation to enjoy PE, encourage each other and achieve. We provide a safe and supportive environment for children to flourish in a range of different physical activities which is essential in supporting their physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and moral development.

It is our intent to build a curriculum that enables children to develop knowledge, skills, and vocabulary in a broad range of sporting activities, as well as developing values and transferrable life skills such as tolerance, fairness, teamwork, and respect alongside fostering a healthy sense of competitiveness and sportsmanship. Through a wide range of extra-curricular clubs, intra-school competitions, and competitive sporting opportunities against other schools in the wider community, we aim to raise the profile of PE and expose our children to sports that they may never have had the opportunity to engage with before.

We teach the National Curriculum, supported by clear skills and knowledge progression. Skills and knowledge are built upon year by year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all children of all abilities. These sport-specific skills that are taught through both class teachers and experienced sports coaches, enhance children’s sporting ability both in team games and individual sports so that they can perform with increasing confidence and competence across these physical activities.

Music – Our aim at St Winefrides’ is to teach our children the skills and language of music in an interactive and fun way allowing our pupils to be expressive and creative in their approach no matter what their ability. Through the musical program Charanga, teachers can produce inclusive lessons for all children to access the musical curriculum in a fun and engaging way, further promoting a love of learning. Teachers deliver music following the Charanga programme, designed specifically for the teaching of music in primary schools. Charanga lessons are planned in sequences to provide children with the opportunities to review, remember, deepen, and apply their understanding. In our daily school life, we use music to communicate, enthuse and stimulate. We recognise that music reflects different cultures and societies as well as being a powerful tool to bond our local community.

We also recognise that music can reflect and support our own understanding of time and place. By allowing creative exploration we will teach musicianship (pulse, beat rhythm and pitch) through singing, listening, composing, and performing.

By learning key skills and techniques in a progressive way, we will build on previously learned knowledge of sound organisation and tuned and untuned instruments.

We will learn appreciation of music by hearing many different types of music from culturally rich origins and from different historical eras. We will learn to sing together with joy on a regular basis. We will be able to perform our ideas with confidence in a safe environment. Our rich and exciting music curriculum ensures children sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. This is embedded in the classroom teaching and learning as well as the weekly singing assemblies, various concerts and performances and the learning of instruments (in class and 1:1 tuition).

MFL - French is taught to all KS2 pupils. Pupils are exposed to incidental French, and other modern foreign languages as part of the school day, and special days, such as European Language Day or Bastille Day, are held each year, where pupils are immersed in the language and culture of the chosen country.

At St Winefride’s, we value educational visits and visitors are warmly invited into school to enhance the pupils’ learning and bring our curriculum to life with real hands-on experiences.

In year 4 and year 6, the pupils are invited to take part in residential visits.

Our Year 4 children have opportunity to engage in a three-day residential trip where they engage in outdoor activities. As many pupils have not stayed away from their families before, the visit provides opportunity to develop their social, interpersonal, self-help and independence skills. It is a wonderful opportunity to try new activities in a new setting and challenge oneself.

Currently, the children in year 6 have opportunity to engage in a five-day residential visit to the Conway Centre (Anglesey) for year 6 pupils is to build upon these personal experiences, and to challenge the pupils to extend their ‘comfort zone’ through activities such as gorge walking, canoeing, climbing, abseiling, and similar adventures.

If you click on the class tab, you can visit any class in the school and here you will find a curriculum overview for each class for each term as well information about the children’s learning and experiences.

If you require further details about the curriculum taught at St. Winefride's, please contact the school.

Please click on to the Curriculum tab above which will open a drop-down menu for curriculum areas and here you will find further details about our wonderful curriculum.

 

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