St Paul’s Curriculum
INTENT
At St Paul’s all that we do is driven by our school vision:
At the heart of St Paul’s we aim for excellence. We seek to understand ourselves and to understand others. We value creativity and the joy of learning whilst gaining a deep understanding of the Christian faith.
It is our aim that our vision underpins the curriculum. For this reason, our curriculum plans are all written explicitly for our St Paul's children; our plans keep in mind always our vision; excellence, understanding, joy and faith.
Our intent is to offer an ambitious, well-sequenced curriculum that strives for excellence and for the children to joyfully engage in high quality learning experiences. Memorable learning experiences are integrated into our curriculum in every year group. These have been carefully considered with our school vision in mind. The academic and personal development benefits of our joyful and memorable learning is something that we are extremely proud of.
To support the excellence and joy that we want our learners to experience, we have also woven throughout our curriculum discrete opportunities to develop in our children a deep sense of self and the world around us. It is for this reason that our vision has a focus on 'understanding'. This is delivered through aspects of our curriculum, particularly PSHE, but is also part of much of our daily practice; collective worship reflections, well-planned speaking and listening opportunities, shows, assemblies, elections for leadership roles, and importantly, teaching of our St Paul's values. We believe that being a faith school gives us the opportunity to nurture children in a safe environment and our partnership with UNICEF gives us the opportunity to test our understanding of the world around us.
All of our curriculum is firmly rooted in supporting our children to develop a deeper understanding of the Christian faith. We enjoy a particularly close partnership with St Paul’s Church. Our local clergy lead collective worship on a weekly basis in school. The clergy work alongside staff when teaching about topics such as baptism or the journey through life from a Christian perspective.
IMPLEMENTATION
We have high expectations in all subject areas and encourage and nurture our children to become independent thinkers and learners. The curriculum is planned and delivered sequentially, building on skills, with knowledge therefore more likely to become embedded in pupils’ long-term memory. Clear planning maps out the progress the children make with their skills and knowledge from entering the school in EYFS to their end point in Year Six. This is checked using regular assessment opportunities and progress is reported to our families on a termly basis. We believe that our curriculum provides our children with cultural capital; essential knowledge and development of citizenship that will serve our children well throughout their lives.
In our Curiosity Curriculum, each topic will start with a memorable experience. This is intentional to make learning ‘sticky’. If a child remembers an experience they are more likely to remember the learning associated with it. At the start they will receive a topic knowledge map which includes useful facts and information for that topic as well as a core glossary which they will cover as part of weekly spelling tests to help reinforce new language. At home families receive a termly overview. Supporting each unit is a class story. We strongly believe in the shared experience of a teacher reading to the class and have shaped our curriculum to take advantage of this.
IMPACT
We want children to leave St Paul’s ready and able to face the next steps in their education. Our curriculum secures strong academic attainment and we are proud that our children go on to their secondary schools with great foundations. We want our children to leave us at the end of Year 6 flooded with happy memories of their time at St Paul's along with a genuine sense of personal success that will support them far beyond their primary school years. This comes when children feel safe, take learning risks, are challenged and supported. School is so much more than reading, writing and maths. It is adventures with friends on overnight trips, representing the school in sports, singing at the top of our lungs at the O2 Arena or Royal Albert Hall, spending time in peace together in school or with the many other Church of England schools across London at St Paul’s Cathedral. Our curriculum, which is full of ‘Big Questions’ gives the children skills and resilience to persevere in further deepening their knowledge and understanding beyond their time at St Paul’s. All of these exciting opportunities help develop confidence and through that we are able to enhance our children’s natural curiosity. It is for this reason that we named our curriculum The Curiosity Curriculum.
Children leave our school with a sense of belonging to a tight knit community which has a strong grounding in the Christian faith.