St Joseph's Curriculum

What does your child learn at school each day? Find information about our curriculum subjects here.

 

Intent

 

As a faith filled community, our vision is that that our children will ‘Aspire to be more, not to have more’; developing academically, physically, socially, spiritually, morally and culturally as children of God. St Joseph’s aims to provide opportunities for our children to develop as confident, independent, successful learners, with high aspirations who know how to make a positive contribution to their community and wider society. St Joseph’s places a high focus on ensuring that our children are well prepared for life in modern Britain.

 

At St Joseph’s we offer a broad, balanced and academically rigorous curriculum for all our learners, in an environment that is inclusive, where learners enjoy their education. Our curriculum is designed with knowledge at its heart, a focus on vocabulary and regular opportunities for children to review and reflect on their understanding of the world around them. Our Intention is that our curriculum promotes long-term learning and provides opportunities for children to build on prior knowledge. We use Knowledge Organisers, which we share with parents, making explicit the knowledge that the children are expected to learn, understand and digest over the course of their study. We aim to ensure that children are both interested in their learning and interesting to talk to, as they know a great deal about the world in which they live. Our Home Learning Journals support links between learning at school and home and our termly ‘Showcases’ provide opportunities for children to share their knowledge with an audience. We have used research based theories to support the thinking behind our curriculum planning, that includes how memory works and the idea that knowledge is 'sticky’; the more children know, the easier it is for them to build Schemas-rich webs of knowledge.

 

Implementation and Impact of Our School curriculum

 

Here at St Joseph's, we strive to create an environment where children develop a lifelong love of learning and that our children have access to the rich cultural inheritance that our nation and the wider world has to offer. In doing so, it is our aim to give them the skills that they need to be successful at St Joseph's and beyond. 

 

We recognise that different children learn in different ways and so plan an engaging and relevant curriculum that reflects this, taking into account our understanding of how children learn, ensuring that these strategies and structures feature in daily practice. Each child is valued as a unique individual and their education will be tailored to get the best out of them.

 

Whilst we acknowledge the importance of the core subjects like reading, writing, mathematics and science, we understand the need to develop a well-rounded curriculum, that is enriched by the teaching of art, design and technology, computing, sports and many other areas.  We aim to give the children frequent opportunities to learn outside of the school grounds in the form of the many trips that we arrange each year.  Alongside this, the children take part in weekly enrichment sessions which aim to broaden their learning and help children discover new passions.  The sessions can range from life skills, such as cooking, to inspirational speakers and careers advise.  We feel that this approach towards education gives children the opportunities to discover and develop a wide range of talents.

 

At St Joseph's, we deliver and meet all statutory requirements of the National Curriculum and deliver all subjects as follows:

 

• English,
• Mathematics,
• Science,
• Religious Education,
• Computing,
• Geography,
• History,
• Physical Education,
• Art and Design,
• Personal, Social and Health Education
• Music.

 

Children in Key Stage 2 learn a modern foreign language (MFL), which is French.

 

These subjects are often taught through a particular topic so that the children are able to make links between their learning but are clearly identified within the topic. The School has designed their curriculum so that our children are able to recognise individual subjects but also make links between subjects, developing a deeper understanding. Children will revisit topics more than once in their time at the school, which is intentional, so that children have the opportunity to retrieve previous knowledge, build on this prior understanding and widen it further.

 

Please see our yearly curriculum overviews.

Curriculum Overviews

 

Please click on the links below to access each class’s curriculum overview for 2023/2024

Subject Overview

 

Please click on the links below to access science, history and geography overviews for this academic year.