Curriculum Intent
At St Clare’s we follow the National Curriculum and offer a broad and balanced curriculum for all our learners. St Clare’s is a community of hardworking families who are able to take their children to visit places around the world and appreciate what the world can offer. Therefore we offer a curriculum which builds on these experiences. We are proud of where we come from and embrace the local area in our learning to make the most of all opportunities. We are bringing a sense of belonging to each of our children that is realistic in its starting points.
The inclusive curriculum at St Clare’s Catholic Primary School is designed to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all children. Based on the 2014 National Curriculum, it provides opportunities for children to develop as independent, confident and successful learners, with high aspirations, who know how to make a positive contribution to their local community and the wider society. We use CUSP (Curriculum with Unity Schools Partnership) as a base curriculum for Reading, Science, History, Geography, French, Art and Design and Design Technology. For PSHE, maths, writing, music, computing, PE and RE we have specific schemes of work. All of our schemes of work are aligned with our teaching and learning procedures and feedback policy.
CUSP is:
- ‘Connected’
- ‘Cumulative’
- ‘Coherent’
CUSP is underpinned by evidence, research and cognitive science. Modules are deliberately sequenced for robust progression and allows teachers to focus on the lesson.
There is an emphasis on oracy and vocabulary acquisition, retention and use to break down learning barriers and accelerate progress. A rich diet of language and vocabulary is deliberately planned for.
Specific skills are discreetly taught and practiced so that they become transferable. The sequenced modules activate prior learning, build on skills and deepen knowledge and understanding. Learning, vocabulary and content is cumulative; content is learned, retrieved and built upon
Our curriculum ensures that academic development, creativity and problem solving, as well as physical development, well-being and mental health are key elements that support the development of our pupils and promote a positive attitude to learning. Our curriculum promotes an understanding and respect for our local community, of which we are proud, as well as the diversity that Teesside offers. It utilises the skills, knowledge and cultural wealth of the community while supporting the children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, ensuring that children are well prepared for life in Modern Britain.
Our curriculum builds on our strong relationships that currently exist with our families and our strong St Clare’s community so that families learn together and grow together. We offer many opportunities for our families to learn and play together through curriculum based homework, curriculum weeks in school where parents can get involved in their child’s learning and school celebrations.
Our curriculum also has a strong emphasis on our children growing up to be strong global citizens, ready for the world they will work in as adults. We want our children to experience how to campaign and be proactive in making big changes locally and globally.
Our curriculum continues to be fully inclusive and accessible to all learners including our Pupil Premium and SEND children. We avoid placing a ceiling limit on our children and use a mastery approach to learning.
Children at St Clare’s love to read and this is a clear strength with parents fully supporting by reading every night. We teach daily discrete phonics using LittleWandle from reception to year 1 and then LittleWandle intervention and fluency from year 2. Our children have a love of reading session at the end of everyday to enjoy a story or novel with the class teacher. Comprehension skills are taught throughout the week in dedicated reading daily sessions using the Cusp curriculum. We use phonically decodable books until our children are ready for our Little Wandle fluency books. Our teachers use quality books to drive our curriculum ensuring that all children are immersed in a high standard of language every day in all subjects. .This ensures that our children can engage in a wide variety of reading materials across all curriculum areas.
Curriculum Implementation
St Clare’s has a coherent school wide model of pedagogy across all subjects. This can be seen in the responsive teaching model:
Teaching and learning protocol
Retrieve: 
Retrieval tasks support children in knowing more and remembering more over time. Retrieval tasks are designed into each lesson and help children to make links between previous units of work over time and to make stronger connections with their learning.
‘Using your memory shapes your memory ‘
Robert Bjork
Explain and Model: 
The most effective teachers have a deep knowledge of the subject/content they are teaching, this is one of the core foundations for preparing and delivering effective lessons.
Check for understanding:
Teachers need to develop the skills so they can be responsive, adjust explanations and tasks according to how pupils are responding. The central mechanism in effective classroom talk is good use of questioning.
‘There will be a gap between what you taught and what they understood. Regardless of why it will be your job to fix it.’
Doug Lemov ‘Teach Like a Champion’
Applied Learning:
Following guided and scaffolded practice there needs to be opportunities for independent application in order for skills and knowledge to become automatic and embedded.
Impact
Every pupil shows the qualities of the fruits of the Holy Spirit in their daily life and walks in the light of Christ.
Every pupil appreciates the past, present and potential future of where we live.
Every pupil understands their commitment to support catholic social teaching principles.
Every pupil acquires knowledge and skills to prepare them for the next stage in their life.
Every pupil, regardless of background or barriers to learning, reaches their full potential.
National Curriculum link:
National curriculum in England: framework for key stages 1/2 – GOV.UK
Our curriculum offer is fully inclusive and we fully comply with the Equality Act 2010 and the Special Educational Needs and disability Regulations 2014. (please see SEND section for further details
If you would like any further information on the curriculum in each year group, please access each year group page on this website or alternatively contact your child’s class teacher via the school’s phone number on 01642 815412. We also have a curriculum development group in school that would be more than happy to talk through our curriculum further. .
