Curriculum
St Andrew's Curriculum Intent
We aim to provide a broad and balanced education, giving all of our pupils, particularly the most disadvantaged and those with SEND, the knowledge, skills and memorable experiences they need to succeed in life and to be able to apply these in relevant situations. Our curriculum is designed to meet the needs of our community, with a particular emphasis on our core values: Friendship, Courage and Confidence. Through these values, we aim to support pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development to enable them to appreciate and understand the community in which they live in and the world beyond. Our Christian distinctiveness supports our children through a nurturing and inspiring curriculum. Our aim is that children feel safe to explore and question throughout their learning, with a love of reading that will ensure that they are prepared for the next stage of their education. We believe our curriculum will inspire children to achieve.
St Andrew's Curriculum map 2022-23
Reading, Writing and Maths Learning Steps
Year 1 - Reading, Writing and Maths
Year 2 - Reading, Writing and Maths
Year 3 - Reading, Writing and Maths
Year 4 - Reading, Writing and Maths
Year 5 - Reading, Writing and Maths
Year 6 - Reading, Writing and Maths
Children are taught to read with twice daily phonics lessons to ensure that they quickly acquire the skills to become fluent and enthusiastic readers. In KS2 they move to daily whole class reading sessions. Alongside this our school provides a range of reading books from well regarded publishers. Books are organised following the coloured band system giving children a wide range of choice within the band or level they are reading within. Phonics is led jointly by Mrs Anderson and Mrs Davey as part of our English team led by Mrs Day.
We follow the Department for Education Letters and Sounds phonics programme supplemented by resources from Phonics Play. We use Big Cat phonically decodable reading books that are matched to the phases the children are learning.
Science, history, geography, art, design technology and music are taught using a topic approach. Teachers plan topics each year following National Curriculum guidelines. Each topic is a carefully planned 'learning journey', where lessons are planned to provide progression of skills and knowledge both within the topic and across each year group and key stage. Each topic starts with an exciting 'Hook' and leads up to an end point, giving children purpose for their learning. Learning is planned carefully using a two year cycle and our progression documents to ensure that children in mixed age classes always experience new subject material.
These foundation subjects are led by teachers as part of the Foundation Subject team led by Mr Sharp.
Science is led by Mr Ford as part of the STEM team led by Mrs Willis. You can read more about the learning steps for Science here:
KS1 and KS2 - Science Learning Steps
PSHE is taught for 1-2 weeks at the start of each term and includes the new mandatory for 2020 RSE curriculum. This learning is then reinforced throughout the term. PSHE is led by Mrs Spooner.
Overview of the PSHE Curriculum
Religious Education is taught discretely and our curriculum is planned following the Norfolk Agreed Syllabus and Understanding Christianity resource.
St Andrew's Religious Education Curriculum overview for 2021-2022.
Information about Understanding Christianity
You can read more about how children learn RE on this page.
A Modern Foreign Language is taught in Key Stage 2. Currently we offer Spanish and use resources from Language Angels to suport this learning.
Early Years Foundation Stage
Children in our Reception class and Pre-school follow a play based curriculum using the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum guidance. Our purpose built EYFS unit is organised following the Early Excellence Model. Child led learning holds a very important place in our planning, encouraging our children to plan, negotiate and problem solve. You can view our EYFS curriculum for this year here: The EYFS team is led by Mrs Mint.
If you would like more information about our school's curriculum, please contact the school office or your child's class teacher and they will be able to help with your enquiry.