Intent

At Saint Francis Xavier Catholic Primary School, our knowledge based curriculum is designed to ensure that knowledge and understanding builds over time allowing children to create clear links in their learning. Children know their learning journey and have an understanding of how lessons build upon each other. We build knowledge so that our pupils don’t just recall facts but deeply understand them therefore embedding them into their long-term memory. The school’s curriculum is planned and sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before, and children work systematically towards defined end points.   

Our curriculum is designed to provide new experiences and develop the skills of enquiry, as a result, our pupils can talk confidently and articulately about their learning.

We provide this by ensuring high expectations through challenge, questioning, nurture and motivating experiences. We shape the children to be good citizens that leave with the knowledge and skills required for the wider world. We ensure children can enquire, self-reflect, and make connections in order to give them the confidence to make decisions and enhance their cultural capital and know about life beyond Balby.

At our heart we are a reading school and our core belief is that reading is the key to unlocking our children’s future. We provide many opportunities throughout the curriculum to create both skilled and lifelong readers.

Implementation

At St Francis Xavier, we believe:

• Every child can succeed, regardless of background
• That the teacher makes the difference
• That our curriculum is informed by evidence and research
• In working with all stakeholders, we create an exciting diverse, challenging and robust curriculum which meets the needs of all of the children in our school.

We believe our curriculum design and delivery leads to improved teaching and learner outcomes, which impacts positively on children’s life chances.

As a result, we implement our curriculum for History, Geography and Science by following the Ark Curriculum Plus Programme. Evidence shows that pupils make more progress when they have been equipped to master a subject by understanding its fundamental concepts in sufficient depth so that they can apply subject knowledge in unfamiliar contexts. Our commitment is to empower and equip the teaching staff to provide high quality subject teaching, through curriculum collaboration and integrated professional development, in order to develop our children's subject mastery.

The History, Geography and Science programmes have been constructed to support the delivery of a comprehensive and challenging curriculum which will ensure pupils gain a rich knowledge of the world in which they live. It will also provide experiences such as educational visits, topic days, our immersive curriculum environment and extra curricular opportunities, to help them make sense of it and build the confidence to make judgments on what they see. History, Geography and Science have been designed to engage our children in their learning, with fascinating units such as; Protecting our environment, Evolution and inheritance, Mayan Civilisation, Global Challenges and much more. Meaningful cross-curricular links are included between the subjects where they are beneficial to our pupils’ learning.

Impact

Our children will be able to discuss their learning with good level of knowledge using technical vocabulary across all subjects. By the time they leave school a vast majority have sustained mastery with some greater depth. Summative assessments as well as standard tests will help us monitor children’s development of mastery however Teacher’s Assessment will be the main evidence of academic attainment. Pupil, staff and parent surveys with a big focus on pupil’s voice will aid us knowing the children’s social and emotional well-being. This is evidenced in the work that the children have undertaken in each respective subject area and celebrates a truly exciting and challenging curriculum.