Curriculum
In designing our curriculum, as a staff team we have given careful consideration to our school's context and the strengths, lived experiences and aspirations of our children. As a result, the acquisition of language, the development of oracy and communication skills and a love of reading are at the heart of our curriculum. We also know that to ignite a lifelong love of learning we need to provide our children with a wide variety of high quality first-hand experiences that will enrich and broaden their horizons so that they are motivated and inspired to excel in their learning throughout their time at St. George's and beyond. These are reflected the 'St. George's Guarantee' document.
Given that language, oracy and the development of communication skills are inextricably linked and ubiquitous we have designed a curriculum where learning in English, science, history, geography, design technology, art and design takes place in the context of cross curricular learning adventures. Each learning adventure lasts for half a term and is based on a rich, engaging, high quality text. This means that the children frequently revisit the vocabulary, language, key concepts, and knowledge relating to each learning adventure, so they build a solid and deep understanding of what they are learning. This cross-curricular approach also means that the children have opportunities to use and apply their skills and knowledge in different subject areas, which enables them to make links, so their learning becomes securely embedded in their long term memory. As we currently have mixed aged classes within the school, the cross-curricular half-termly learning adventures take place over a two-year cycle - see the 'Curriculum overview' document for further information.
We recognise that to be taught effectively, some areas of the curriculum, such as maths, RE, PE, music, computing and Modern Foreign Languages do not lend themselves to a cross-curricular approach, so these are taught discretely. However, where possible we ensure that links are made with learning that is taking place within the cross-curricular learning adventure.
As a staff team we know that each subject area within the curriculum has a distinct body of disciplinary and substantive knowledge in its own right. We pride ourselves in being a school that is constantly seeking to improve and in order to ensure our teaching of each subject area (whether it is taught within cross-curricular learning adventures or as a discrete subject) is as effective as possible we have a vision statement for each subject area. The subject vision statement captures the distinct and unique learning and characteristics of each subject area. Subject leaders use these vision statements as the basis for their monitoring and evaluation activities in their subject areas.
More details about our Curriculum can be found by emailing the school for the attention of the Deputy Headteacher.