Vision

Our curriculum has been designed so that pupils at St Mary’s gain the knowledge, skills and wisdom to be able to flourish in God’s world. We want them to develop what they will need to succeed at secondary school but importantly, also have a love of learning and a sense of their own agency and importance in the world. We want them to feel they have a voice and a stake in the future. Ultimately, we have designed our curriculum to make sure that all our pupils learn to care and advocate for themselves, their community and their world.

Our Intent

Our curriculum has been built in carefully sequenced steps to ensure that children explore the breadth and depth of all subjects. We offer a broad and balanced approach that values the importance of reading, writing and mathematics, but that also ensures children develop a solid foundation in wider curriculum subjects. We believe that all children should develop a rich and deep subject knowledge, while also having the opportunity to develop and apply their knowledge, skills and wisdom in a variety of contexts.

We aim to motivate our children and deepen their understanding through providing them with a range of educational experiences both in and beyond the classroom. Where possible, we link these to our local community, its history and its culture, and try to give children experiences that enrich, deepen and contextualise their learning.

English

Spoken language, reading and writing is taught every day in creative ways, with opportunities to apply skills across the curriculum in different contexts.

Reading is a life skill, and we are dedicated to enabling our pupils to become lifelong readers. We believe reading is key for academic success, but at St Mary’s, we also strive to nurture a love of reading and help children discover the joy of reading in its own right. As decoding skills are mastered, learning continues to focus on comprehension and vocabulary, ensuring the breadth and depth of reading enables pupils to become independent, fluent and enthusiastic readers who read widely and frequently for pleasure.

At St Mary’s, phonics is taught systematically, through the Read Write Inc programme using multi-sensory strategies to develop early reading skills and develop a love reading from the beginning.

As the children progress, they will be introduced to Accelerated Reader. This is programme to ensure children are reading books at an appropriately challenging level and allows them to access fun quizzes to measure their understanding of the books they have read.

In KS2, our class teaching of reading is based on the ERIC reading skills (Explaining, Retrieving, Inferenced/Interpreting and Choice (author’s intent.))

Writing is taught through a logical sequence of learning and practising the skills of composition, sentence structure, grammar and spelling, with opportunities to apply these to writing in different genres and contexts and for a range of purposes and audiences.

Spelling

• Spelling-Shed-parent-guide.254312398.docx
• spellings-year-5-and-6-word-mat-.pdf
• -year-1-common-exception-words.pdf
• year-2-common-exception-words.pdf
• year-3-and-4-common-exception-words-words.pdf

Maths

We strive for our pupils to be able to calculate fluently, reason with confidence and problem solve methodically. Our mastery curriculum has been developed to ensure that every pupil can succeed in mathematics – challenging and supporting children wherever necessary. Our maths curriculum is structured by the White Rose Scheme of learning. Here, we focus on breaking down topics into manageable objectives; building coherence and fluency with each step. Skills are built upon year-on-year and children are encouraged to be proud of, and motivated by, their individual progress. Pupils move from concrete resources to pictorial representations and finally into the numerical abstract, supported through quality modelling; group work and learning as a cohort. Pupils are provided with a broad, balanced, engaging and relevant curriculum. The critical-thinking, questioning and problem-solving skills learners acquire during this time help to prepare them for real life challenges and experiences.

RE

Here at Lyminge, Religious Education holds a central role in our whole school curriculum, exploring concepts that support the children’s development to engage fully in life in Modern Britain. It encourages and develops a safe learning environment where children explore personal ideas and beliefs and learn and respect those of others. The Christian faith is an important focus, but together with learning about a wide range of faiths as well. 

EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage)

In the Foundation Stage, children learn through a variety of activities and experiences, with a strong focus on exploring and investigating. The learning environment is designed to promote collaborative learning, independence and the skills of evaluating their own learning. Children demonstrate understanding of learning across 7 areas: –

3 Prime Areas:

Communication and Language

Physical Development

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

4 Specific Areas:

Literacy

Mathematics

Understanding the World

Expressive Arts and Design