Please click on the curriculum page links at the right of this page to see individual subject information.
Intent
Within the Catholic setting of our academy, we at St Teresa’s are working to prepare the children in our care to aspire and take their place in a multicultural society. Our intent is based around our motto and 5 curriculum drivers that help us to overcome the barriers to learning some children face. We aim to provide education that is progressive and high quality using a curriculum that is tailored to the needs of all children.
St Teresa’s Curriculum Drivers; Aspiration, Knowledge of the World, Communication, Preparation for Life, Community.
As a Catholic academy, with Christ at the centre of all we do, only excellence is good enough. Our pupils will gain solid and progressive knowledge from across the curriculum subjects and will be able to transfer knowledge and skills from one context to another.
Our primary aim is to develop a love of learning through meaningful and engaging learning experiences. Our curriculum improvement work started in the year 2020-2021 and rapid improvements were made to ensure our bespoke curriculum is exemplary, broad and fulfils the duties from the Equality Act 2010 and the Special Educational Needs & Disability Regulations 2014.
Implementation
All subjects at St Teresa’s are taught in line with the National Curriculum and using discrete, lessons and sequential learning. We used staff, pupil and governor voice to move away from a thematic curriculum as we want pupils to have a higher level of knowledge acquisition and a greater range of skills and vocabulary they can use in different contexts, in their next stage of education and in life.
Each curriculum area is continually developed as we evaluate the impact of our curriculum offer regularly with external partners and in line with educational research. Parents and children are also essential in our quality assurance. Our continuing improvements include professional development for staff, analysing the barriers to learning that could impact success and ensuring every curriculum subject allows pupils’ knowledge, skills, vocabulary and understanding progress to and beyond age related expectations.
Leaders and staff work closely with our SFSC MAC improvement team and advisors from Wolverhampton LA to ensure the National Curriculum and our school planning and progression documentation (listed below) is implemented effectively.
Some of our curriculum plans use external schemes such as Charanga music, 1Decision PSHE, Get Set PE, Language Angels for MFL.
St Teresa’s curriculum subject documentation includes:
A Discrete Long Term Plan,
Year Group Medium Term Plans,
A Vocabulary Progression Document,
An expectations document for staff delivery,
Assessment (including self-assessment) documentation.
In Key Stages 1-2 discreet lessons are delivered in line with these progressive curriculum plans to ensure pupils acquire and use knowledge and skills in all subject areas.
In 2022-23 we also invested additional curriculum time each week to effectively implement core skills ‘keep up while catching up’ programmes including Kinetic Letters, Vipers for reading comprehension and Mathematical Key Recall Facts. This is part of our commitment that every child achieves an age related standard, or above, in reading, writing and maths.
We have a detailed, ambitious month by month Curriculum Development Timeline that leaders use to guide all improvements helping us ensure children are able to ‘keep up whilst catching up’ and ‘know more and remember more’.
As a parent, you will be sent a curriculum newsletter each term which outlines the curriculum coverage your children will be learning in that term. Teachers also put links and tips to help your children at home linked to the different curriculum areas. You can download these newsletters in the Curriculum tab too.
Please take a look at our subject curriculum pages. If you require further curriculum information or paper copies of our curriculum plans or progression documents, please contact 01902 558862 or email [email protected].
Impact
Lessons, extra curricular opportunities, enrichment opportunities, home learning projects and more are having a positive impact on our pupils’ attitude to learning and school. Pupils are ‘READY’ to learn, engage well in lessons, work hard and are increasingly able to articulate their knowledge, skills and understanding across the curriculum.
Leaders use the St Teresa’s development plan and timeline to focus budget spending, training and curriculum resources in a measured way. Within a short period of time, the impact of our curriculum enhancement and improving teaching and learning work is allowing learners to succeed in key skills and develop fully rounded characters. Due to our PSHE, British Values threads and RE curriculum, it is also clear to see our pupils have a good understanding of complex values like peace, justice, respect and many others. As a Catholic school, pupils also develop strong spiritual knowledge and faith based upon our mission statement and Catholic ethos.
