Our Curriculum Statement

Our Curriculum Statement 

Our Curriculum Intent

At Seaton St Paul’s CE Junior School, we teach a broad and balanced curriculum by immersing our pupils in their learning. Our curriculum aims to provide children with rich, varied and deep knowledge, while developing life-long skills and providing enriching opportunities.

We aim to offer our children opportunities for creativity, problem solving, challenge and enjoyment, while developing their independence, confidence and respectful relationships with others.

Our curriculum is delivered through six cross- curricular themed units per year, which cover all aspects of the National Curriculum and offer skill progression from Year 3- Year 6. These projects are designed to motivate, inspire and challenge every child.

We take pride in offering our children a curriculum that is relevant to their lives while broadening their horizons and understanding of the wider world around them.

As a Church of England school, it is important to us that our Christian Values, specially selected by the children, are thoroughly embedded in all aspects of school life. 

Our Curriculum Implementation

 It is important that every topic within our curriculum offers the following:

• A ‘WOW’ experience to introduce new learning- this is always designed to excite, motivate and engage the children.
• Engaging and relevant learning new skills and knowledge. All National Curriculum objectives are taught. Skills and understanding have clear progression. Lessons at Seaton St. Paul’s CE Junior School are varied, interactive, memorable and challenging for all learners.
• The important opportunity for the children to present their new knowledge and skills to an audience. We love to invite parents in to school to view our curriculum in action, and every class produces a Curriculum Assembly, where we confidently present our new learning to our family, friends and community.

Enrichment

It is hugely important to us that we meet the needs of children in order for them to become independent and confident young people, who are equipped to succeed in the world around them. We therefore offer a wide spectrum of opportunities to build on and enhance pupils’ learning. Examples of children enjoying these enrichment opportunities can be seen on our website and include:

• Visits/ Residential Trips
• Visitors
• Specialist Curriculum Theme Days
• Sporting Tournaments
• Musical Events
• Annual theatre performance
• Learning in Local Secondary Schools
• Celebration of Achievements

Local Learning

We are very lucky to live in a wonderful part of the world and make sure we utilise our local area at Seaton St. Paul’s CE Junior School- we regularly use our beautiful local surroundings to enhance our curriculum. For example, some year groups conduct local geography studies, others focus on local poets and authors in English. Adventure packed residential trips in the Lake District build team work, life and survival skills while visits in our local area cover many other aspects of the history curriculum.

Resilience and Life Skills

Over recent years we have been committed to developing a Growth Mindset Culture in school. This is an intrinsic part of all aspects of school life. 

We also have a Whole School Mental Health Strategy as we think that this has never been more important to children in today's society.

Parents and Community

The local community is so important to our school, as are the parents of our children. Parents are kept up to date weekly with exciting curriculum news on our website and Facebook page. Topic Overviews are always available to parents, in addition to a detailed Curriculum Newsletter that we send home once every half term. Parents are invited regularly into school to see our Curriculum Assemblies and we love to share our work books with our parents whenever we can!

Extra- Curricular Learning

We have a comprehensive schedule of extra- curricular clubs here at Seaton St. Paul’s. Some examples of our weekly after school clubs include:

• Computing
• Rota- Kids Club
• Multi- Skills Sport Club
• Hockey
• Gymnastics
• Football

Our Christian Values, SMSC and Fundamental British Values

Our children are immersed in an environment where Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural values are at the heart of everything we do. SMSC values are taught discretely once per week, during assemblies with members of our Senior Leadership team, and also indirectly in every lesson and around the school outside of lessons.

At Seaton St. Paul’s Junior School we teach children the importance of identity, safety and what it means to be a responsible citizen of this country. We sensitively raise current subjects with the children in order to keep them protected and safe.

Ultimately, it is our aim to ensure our children become honest, responsible and tolerant members of society.

Some examples of the way we develop SMSC in school:

• A focus on well-being and mental health
• Daily meditation and ‘calm’ time
• A qualified school councillor
• Visitors from different cultures and faiths
• Visit places of worship
• Theme Days such as ‘What Makes Britain Great?’ and ‘Christmas around the World’
• Reading stories from different cultures in English lessons
• Linking SMSC issues into all areas of the Curriculum e.g. Fairtrade in maths, celebrating key figures in black and ethnic minority history.

The Impact of Our Curriculum

It is imperative to us that our children achieve excellence not only in the core subjects, but in every curriculum subject.

We have lots of ways of measuring and celebrating success across the curriculum, as well as ensuring that children know what they need to do to progress.

We ensure that we maintain a broad and balanced curriculum in the following ways:

• Experienced Subject Leaders for every subject.
• Every subject included in our School Development Plan and Monitoring Schedule- meaning that standards and attainment in every subject are always being checked and improved.
• Accountability to Governance for every subject- all subjects have a nominated governor, who leaders update regularly. It’s the job of the governors to ask us challenging questions about how to make our school even better!
• Specialist teachers in art, drama, music, PE and Design and Technology.
• Teacher Assessment in every subject.
• Communication with parents about all strands of the curriculum.
• We have a commitment to teaching a varied, cross- curricular approach to learning.
• Rich, educational school visits and visitors.
• WOW events which provide children with memorable life experiences.

Always Improving

Here at Seaton St, Paul’s, we look very closely at our curriculum and are always striving to improve. Every subject here has a dedicated leader who monitors standards, provides training to colleagues, as well as giving weekly updates on every aspect of the curriculum during dedicated Curriculum Meetings. Leaders keep a close eye on professional organisations so that they are up to date with any changes in their subject.

Leaders regularly meet with our excellent Governing Body, who monitor standards of every subject. They ask challenging questions of Subject Leaders to really get them thinking about next steps improve and enrich our curriculum even further!