Curriculum Intent
Our curriculum has its origins in the National Curriculum for schools in England. The school offers a broad and balanced curriculum with a clear focus on subjects as discrete units. Units of work ensure sequential, layered knowledge acquisition, with each piece of learning in different subjects building on previous ones.
St Paul's Primary School is a literacy rich learning environment that celebrates and encourages oracy in the early years and beyond. We recognise reading as the gateway to pupil learning and so we place a strong focus on early reading and vocabulary development from the beginning of a child's career in school.
The school has a strong sporting history and so swimming and other sporting components are significant features to curriculum e.g. additional swimming time, fun runs and competition sports through Camden.
Strong links have also been established with various arts provision in Camden. Annually a class learns the Ukulele and children participate in Camden Music Festivals, for 10 years the school has linked with the Shakespeare for Schools Project and more recently 2 classes have participated in dance projects run by The Place in Camden.
As a Voluntary Aided Church School we are inclusive of all members of our local community, we hold our Christian values and traditions close to our mission and core values.
Our Curriculum helps us to achieve our mission statement and ensures that our values, core and Christian, are experienced positively by our children.
All these links, along with the expectation and experience of our everyday lives and strong connections with community, enrich the curriculum with expert knowledge and deepen learning experiences for all our children, improving their cultural capital.
Our location sits us directly across the road from our linked Church, St Mary the Virgin, Primrose Hill. We have a close relationship with the Vicar, Marjorie Brown and her curate, who visit the school regularly, lead our services and plan collective worship and other RE related topics. This link also provides a strong pastoral support for staff, children and families and at times the school has called on the clergy to support members of our community.
The church also offers a very successful Youth Service, our children have access to provision after school on a Friday. We use the expertise and experience of the youth service to enhance our teaching of local issues for our children, areas such as gang and knife culture.
For several years St Paul’s CE School has fund raised and learned about Bowa School in Malawi. Children actively fund raise and undertake exchanges of information about food, where we live, life in London etc. the children who attend Bowa school reciprocate with information about their lives. The charity supporting the project visit at least annually to share images and information about the impact of our works.
Taken in its entirety our curriculum supports our children well in preparing them to be ready for the next stages in their lives, to take their place in society and to exemplify the British Values of equality, tolerance, democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.
Each subject for each year group is supported by an annual curriculum map and half termly medium term planning. These other documents will give more detail on the specifics of skills, progression and topic content.
School Curriculum Maps:
Guides to support writing at home
Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6
Mental Maths yearly expectations
Expectations for the end of the year:
Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6
Early Years Foundation Stage Overview
The Reception classroom learning environment is planned around the seven areas of Early Years learning and development:
- Personal, Social & Emotional Development
- Communication & Language
- Physical Development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts & Design
Children are supported in their development across these seven areas through short carpet sessions, adult led group work and structured play and exploration opportunities.
Children are encouraged to take story books home each day to share with their family and are also introduced to reading scheme books.
In Maths, early mathematical concepts are explored through play, games, stories and songs.
Children are given daily opportunities to express themselves creatively through role-play, art, music and dance. They explore different media such as watercolour painting, printing, pastels, chalk, collage and clay.
As well as free Physical Development for play, we have regular games sessions in the playground and dance and movement sessions in the hall.
What we do to help children with special educational needs.
We know that parents are the first educators of their child - we need their knowledge to plan effectively.
Our starting point is to have a conversation with parents/carers in the summer term before children start school: We ask whether parents/carers about a child’s strengths and interests and if they have any concerns about their children - for example, if they have a disability, special need or medical need. This helps us to plan how we will support their child once he/she starts school. If a child has attended a Nursery school or Children’s Centre we use the information they provide to plan the best programme of support.
In addition we assess all children in the first half term in our school through careful and sensitive classroom observation and an early review of progress. We also listen to children to find out how they are settling in to school. We continue to assess and monitor all through the child’s time in school so that we can look out for any special educational needs that might arise later on.
We take great care to establish whether limited progress is because a pupil has English as an additional language (EAL), for example by talking to the child (and parents) in her/his home language. We also work with specialist services – for example Educational Psychologists and Speech Therapists, who provide expertise in working with school staff, parents and children to agree strategies to best support pupils’ individual needs.
We follow Camden’s guidance for the identification of SEND.
We set out a provision map to show programmes of support/ interventions used by targeted pupils and this is reviewed termly.
How we review your child’s progress.
Pupil Progress Meetings to review all children’s progress take place termly. They involve the SENDCo, class teacher and a member of the senior leadership team, for example the Head and/or Deputy Headteacher.
The progress of all children is discussed and new targets and provision are set where it is needed. All targets and provision are then discussed with parents of children with SEND and pupils. This ensures that both parents and pupil are aware of the next steps for learning. We report formally once a year on the progress of all children, including those with SEND.
How we make sure that teaching and support help your child to learn and make good progress.
St. Paul’s school leaders work with teachers and support staff to provide effective, high quality teaching and well matched support for children with SEND in a variety of ways. These include:
- carefully differentiated (taking account of different needs) planning which ensures that all children are able to make progress
- supporting the class teacher to take full responsibility for the learning and progress of all children o using a wide variety of teaching approaches, including guiding learning through demonstration; providing visual support material o providing a stimulating, rich and interactive classroom environment
- using regular, clear and rigorous assessments that help teachers to track pupils’ progress and identify gaps in their understanding
- using our marking policy to make sure that children know how to improve their work o providing additional adult support from well-trained and well supervised Teaching Assistants
- programmes of support/interventions are evaluated to ensure progress is made by children using them.
How we make sure that children with SEND enjoy a broad and balanced curriculum.
We provide a curriculum that is broad, balanced, motivating and accessible to all children.
We work hard to ensure that all of our children achieve in lots of different ways as well as academic learning – for example, in drama, sport, music, dance, showing leadership and taking on responsibilities.
We encourage children with SEND to play a full part in the life of our school.
We arrange educational visits and journeys and make sure that all of our children can take part.
We do a risk assessment and when necessary make reasonable adjustments to plans and arrangements.
Our Provision Map shows additional specialist support/ interventions to accelerate children’s progress in, for example, reading, writing and mathematics. These sessions run for an agreed amount of time and are well taught by a trained teacher or teaching assistant. Our SEND lead monitors the quality and effectiveness of these interventions every term and changes the support if appropriate.
We also adapt the curriculum to include children with SEND, for example:
- Providing quiet time out for a student with emotional needs
- Providing a visual timetable and clear explanations of tasks
Additional staff provide support for learning in the Classroom and sometimes one to one learning or in small groups away from the main part of the lesson for a short period of time.