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

Our Curriculum Drivers

Our curriculum encompasses the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum. However, this is only one element of the wider school curriculum. An effective curriculum attains the right balance between what a school must teach and the aims and values identified as specific to your school community.

At St Andrew’s our vision statement is ‘Shining Light on a World of Possibilities’ and we have designed our curriculum to be relevant, exciting and creative, underpinned by our school values and based around our ‘curriculum drivers’:

•   Curiosity, enquiry and creativity
•   Community
•   Possibilities

What do we mean by curiosity, enquiry and creativity?

• encouraging children to be inquisitive and questioning;
• encouraging children to be resourceful and independent in their learning;
• providing opportunities for independent thinking and application of skills;
• developing collaborative learning;
• encouraging ‘risk taking’;
• requiring perseverance and improvement through evaluation;
• nurturing problem solvers;
• valuing self-expression
• enabling ‘craftsmanship’

What do we mean by community?

• utilising our local area, and its people in our curriculum
• participation in the local & global community and being a beacon for others;
• promoting cultural awareness and celebrating diversity;
• relating learning to real life contexts;
• investigating the impact of important individuals in our world;
• environmental awareness;
• using technology and connectivity.

What do we mean by possibilities?

• inspiring children to broaden their horizons through exposure to a wide range of life possibilities;
• encouraging enterprise;
• looking at different opportunities and career prospects and meeting people who do different jobs;
• being inspired to travel.

Knowledge Organisers

Each term, children will bring home a document called a Knowledge Organiser. This document contains the essential knowledge that children will need to know as part of the new topic they will be studying in class.

These Knowledge Organisers are designed to be used at home by parents to help children learn the information contained within. We want every child to be able to recall the information on these sheets off by heart by the end of the topic.

This knowledge will be tested towards the end of the term. Please note the children do not have to learn the exact wording of the definitions and facts included although this should be encouraged where possible. If they can put the information in their own words this is acceptable. We will also be learning the same information in class.

The best way to use the Knowledge Organisers at home is as follows:

• Children read the information from the section to be learned (preferably with an adult)
• They then try and recall the information (this can be written down or verbally)
• An adult tests them on the information
• The key to success is to repeat this regularly over the week/s
• It is also important to keep revising the information that has already been learned in previous weeks to keep it fresh in the memory

We are confident that these Knowledge Organisers will help our children to develop knowledge on a range of topics and will significantly improve their vocabulary. This, in turn, will make them more confident in class and help to develop their reading and writing skills.