Curriculum Intent
St Paul’s Infant School is founded on the values that have been created developed and embedded by the school community. These values of Togetherness, Safety, Resilience, Growth and change, Respect and Aspiration underpin all children’s whole school journey, including the curriculum and its delivery.
At St Paul’s we believe that creating a friendly, warm and welcoming environment where children are smiling, happy, feel safe and are keen to come to school is the way to help support and motivate them to become inquisitive, independent learners. St Paul’s also ensures that the children are supported by adults who understand them. Lessons are planned to enable all children to grow and develop. This encourages all children to show progress and move their own personal development forward. St Paul’s aims to equip all children with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed through life.
We believe that the children understand which subject they are learning and explore with them the distinctive features concerned with the subjects, as well as ensuring that the knowledge specific vocabulary is shared in these lessons. Our curriculum is constantly reviewed to consider the different experiences of the children. The adults in school also work hard to plan for opportunities to offer real life experiences which better support understanding. Our curriculum reflects the school’s local context by addressing typical gaps in children’s real life experiences including trips out of school as well as visitors into school. The planning and experiences encourage the children to develop a love of learning and a willingness to explore while having fun and gaining new knowledge.
The curriculum considers many different subject areas. Each of these are well led and monitored to ensure that at St Paul’s we are offering a well-balanced start to their learning journey. Our diverse curriculum connects subjects thereby giving a range of opportunities and a balance of knowledge and skills.
While learning outcomes are planned and progression is carefully considered, the children are offered the opportunity to access their learning in a variety of ways to suit them best. This delivery builds on the strong foundation of the child-initiated skills that the children acquire during their time in our Early
Years classrooms, it also encourages the children to continue with an independent investigation approach, which we feel is a skill for life.
As an infant school, we strongly believe in a positive start for the children working within the expectations of Development Matters for Early Years. This is where the children’s balanced curriculum journey begins. Our children will have the opportunity to be creative, to be physically active and to be academically challenged along each part of their school journey. In KS1, Science, History, Geography, DT and Art are connected by theme and mapped to the requirements of the National Curriculum. RE, RSE, Music, PE and Computing are taught as discrete subjects but where a relevant and meaningful link can be made to our connected units, this is done as well.
At St Paul’s, our curriculum is reviewed yearly across the whole school community and adaptations are made to ensure that the children always continue to strive to be the best they can be.
If you have any further questions about our Curriculum please speak to our Curriculum Lead, Mrs Aldridge.
