Curriculum

At Ermine Street Church Academy, we aim for all pupils to be successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens.

Overview

This guide lets you know how the curriculum supports these key goals at our school.

Our curriculum aims are:

  • To promote highest possible achievement for all pupils irrespective of race, gender, culture or disability.
  • To provide a rich range of knowledge across the whole curriculum.
  • To promote pupil’s intellectual, spiritual, creative, cultural and physical development.
  • To prepare pupils to become responsible citizens, confident, independent, healthy individuals and life-long learners.

“How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! and to get understanding rather to be chosen than silver!” Proverbs 16:16


Our curriculum is designed with the aim of equip our learners with the knowledge and skills they need so that they have high aspirations for themselves, achieve all that they can within their life, celebrate their successes and become active participants within their community. To this aim, our curriculum is knowledge-rich, specified sequenced and is taught to be remembered. We acknowledge that our learners are novices, not experts, and that for them to be successful at becoming experts we must teach the knowledge and skills they require explicitly and directly. 


Being a church school is important to us and Christian values underpin all that we do within our learning and the wider activities in our school. The ethos which reflects that it is a community, who respects and cares for each other, the church and promotes love for learning permeates throughout the school. Children who attend our school are supported to access the full broad curriculum and learn so that they can bear the fruits of their labour and lead a full and rich life as they grow. 


“To be the heartbeat of the community, rooted and established in God’s Love” Ephesians 3:17; “bearing fruit in all seasons” Jeremiah 17:8.


 Our curriculum is designed to be a road map for our students. It is a specified journey towards success in a given field. In this sense it is the progression model. It is sequenced so that it builds knowledge both within year groups and across so that it is embedded and remembered beginning with our EYFS and finishing at the end of Year 6. It is an inclusive, broad curriculum and appropriate adaptation is made to enable all our learners to access it and be successful. 


Our curriculum promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.

Our curriculum is mapped to allow for knowledge to be revisited throughout both within the discipline being studied and across other subject areas.  Learning is broken down to small steps – with practice at each stage.  It is models – including many worked-example to increase and deepen the learners’ understanding.  Scaffolding is provided to develop expertise (e.g. how to structure extended writing or a solution to a problem with missing parts) – but they are gradually withdrawn. Students practice applying the new knowledge and mistakes made are corrected through feedback that feeds forward, enabling students to build confidence and gain high success rates leading to higher independence. Prior knowledge is continually revisited, allowing students to make links with new knowledge. This ensure progression and development of substantive and disciplinary knowledge and, allowing for previous learning to be built upon when embarking on new areas of learning.   


 Within each subject we deliver learning using recommended, respected and tested schemes of work, for example in Maths we use Complete Maths, for Science, History, Geography and Art we use Primary Knowledge Curriculum and in ICT we use the National Centre for Computing Education scheme of work (Teach Computing).

Impact is determined by assessing whether or not the learners develop detailed skills and knowledge across the curriculum and achieve well as a curriculum impact. This is obtained through both assessments and continuous monitoring of the effectiveness in which each subject is taught.


Assessments:

 Termly assessment is carried out in line with the DEMAT timetable: 


  • Reading – DIBELS  
  • Writing – judgement, and involvement in No More Marking  
  • Maths – Headstart assessments  
  • Yr 1 Phonics checks / Yr2 SATs – termly 
  • Yr6 SATs – half termly  
  • YrR Baseline Assessment – Autumn term  
  • Statutory Assessments (May/ June) – EYFS assessments, Yr1 Phonics Checks, Yr2 SATs, Yr4 Multiplication Checks, Yr6 SATs 

SEND children are assessed half termly through completion of the multi-ticks on pupil asset.  


Subject monitoring:


  • Lesson visits
  • Book looks
  • Pupil voice
  • Staff survey
  • Planning 
  • Visual evidence (displays, photos etc.)
  • Resources
  • External view (e.g. parent questionnaire) 

For further information click here for our The Teaching and Learning Policy.

Learning Maps

Spring 1

EYFS

Spring 2