Leaders and staff work together to ensure that the wider curriculum is broad and interesting for pupils. The school motto ‘to love learning’ underpins and guides curriculum planning. Leaders design opportunities for pupils to learn in interesting ways. (Ofsted, 2021)  

Inspired by Jesus' Christ's example and the Gospel Values of love, joy and compassion, at St. Joseph's, we nurture and develop the whole child so that each unique individual grows constantly in confidence, and has the knowledge, skills and self-esteem to achieve their true potential.

All children will access a rich, ambitious, challenging curriculum; one that is broad balanced and relevant, fostering curiosity, creativity and a life-long love of learning.

At St Joseph’s we offer an exciting, rich, and ambitious inclusive curriculum that combines learning core subjects and real-life skills that reflects the different cultures, religions, and races in our school. We have developed an inclusive curriculum that is successfully adapted, designed, and developed to encompass all our children, we aim to remove barriers so that all children can thrive during their time with us. Our ultimate goal is to prepare children with the knowledge and skills they require for their learning journey beyond our school and into adulthood.  We foster the understanding that success is what the children perceive it to be, and we celebrate successes of all pupils, whether academically or personal to them.

The curriculum includes all the planned activities that promote learning and personal growth and development. It includes the requirements of the National Curriculum, but extends more broadly to include the ‘hidden curriculum’, or what children learn from the culture and ethos of our school – the way they are treated and expected to behave. We provide opportunities for children to voice their ideas and explore their own interests through taking responsibilities, involvement in wider aspect of school life as well as in making decisions about their learning in the classroom. 

Our curriculum inspires enquiring minds and a love of learning. We prioritise the fundamental skills of reading, writing and maths fluency so that our children can confidently access our broad curriculum offer. We make use of high-quality learning resources and materials as well as our school gardens to provide memorable learning experiences. We tailor resources to our school, so that the learning takes into account our context, locality and the children's interests. 

St Joseph's has some mixed age classes and some individual year groups. As our school continues to expand, we must ensure that we are adapting and changing to meet the needs of our children. The curriculum is taught for all Years 1-6. To avoid repetition and ensure progression in key skills the curriculum is taught in a 2 year cycle depending on year groups.

The National Curriculum:

We follow the National Curriculum to structure our curriculum offer, as we know that this means our curriculum is ambitious for all pupils. You can find a link to the National Curriculum here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum

Structuring our curriculum offer:

We teach each of the wider curriculum subjects discretely at our school.

For each subject, we have thought carefully about how we sequence learning over time and have broken down learning into small steps or building blocks, starting from when children enter primary school until they leave. At each step, we consider what specific knowledge and understanding we want our pupils to know and remember at each stage of their learning and in each subject. The end of the Foundation Stage, KS1, Lower KS2 and Upper KS2 are key end points for each of these building blocks of our curriculum. We know what we want our pupils to know and remember at each of these end points, focusing on what will be most useful to them, and have sequenced lessons over time to reach those end points.

Gaining Knowledge:

Our curriculum has been carefully designed so that pupils gain more knowledge over time. Some knowledge is very important, and we return to this regularly to help it ‘stick’ in children’s memory. For example, it is crucial that children automatically know the number facts that combine to make 10 (2+8, 3+7 etc). Knowing these number facts allow pupils to make links with many areas of number throughout their school life, so we revisit this learning regularly in the first few years of school to make sure this knowledge is ‘sticky’.

Knowledge is divided into two types:

Substantive Knowledge:  This refers to specific facts to be learnt, such as, for example, the names of the       countries in the United Kingdom (geography), or in history key facts about an historic event such as World War 1. In our curriculum pages, we have given you examples of the substantive knowledge that pupils need to know and remember at each stage in their learning and in each subject. Substantive knowledge refers to knowing ‘what’ specific facts need to be remembered.

Disciplinary Knowledge:  Whereas substantive knowledge is about ‘what’ facts, disciplinary knowledge is about knowing ‘how’.  For example, in music I can know that a minim is the equivalent of 2 beats, a quaver a half beat and a semi-breve four beats (substantive facts), but disciplinary knowledge helps me use this information to clap a rhythm accurately having read it on a musical stave. Sometimes people refer to disciplinary knowledge as skills.

In our curriculum pages, you will see examples of how we have identified the specific substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge we want our children to know, remember and use over time.

Inclusion and diversity:

At our school, we believe that the curriculum should positively promote the inclusion of all children and their families and develop respect and tolerance for their own and other cultures.

Throughout the teaching of our curriculum, children are encouraged to talk and work in mixed ability groups as this enables all children to participate in lessons and promotes the inclusion of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and children who come from a family where English is an additional or second language (EAL / ESL). Those children who are most able are challenged and supported through appropriate extension activities. This may take the form of further independent embedding of skills or application of skills and knowledge in other subject areas. Where the content of lessons would prove to be too difficult for some children within the setting, teachers differentiate their tasks in order to make learning accessible for all children.

EYFS Curriculum:

At St Josephs we focus on developing the EYFS characteristics of effective learning: Playing and Exploring, Active Learning, Creating and Thinking Critically. The EYFS Curriculum is carefully designed to enable children to practise and master the necessary skills needed to achieve the Early Learning Goals. Each activity that is planned is matched to the EYFS ‘Typical Behaviours’ and the corresponding Early Learning Goals and skills.

For more information please use our EYFS tab.