Intent

Vision
At St Gregory's, we are inclusive and recognise that everyone has their own unique God-given talents. Our curriculum is progressive and builds on prior knowledge, understanding and skills so that we develop our whole school community academically, spiritually, emotionally, morally and socially. This enables our children to become righteous citizens who give to society. We provide creative and engaging opportunities that inspire and motivate our children to become lifelong learners, who have aspirations to be the very best they can be.

We recognise that the Curriculum reaches far wider than the learning that happens in formal lessons in each classroom.  It includes everything that a child experiences in their time at our school and develops the very person they are becoming, with their talents, needs and aspirations for the future. Each experience provides a learning opportunity to develop and prepare our children for life in modern Britain as global citizens through the lens of Catholic life.
 

As such, our Early Years Curriculum, The National Curriculum and knowledge and skills the children gain through the formal teaching of this sits alongside the far wider vision we have for the characteristics of the learners we develop at our school.  We are unapologetic for the focus given to the characteristics we seek to develop in each and every member of our school community. These characteristics, which include Catholic Social Teaching principles, threading through all we do, are the key to developing lifelong learners and global citizens.   These permeate our curriculum:

Our Learning Profile

At St-Gregory’s we use Catholic Social Teaching, Restorative Practise, Growth-mindset and Teaching for Mastery to help us develop these characteristics within our learners both inside and outside the classroom.

Whole school design and structure of the formal taught curriculum
We have designed the curriculum around year group themes which are driven by high quality texts. Encompassing texts into our themes captures children’s imagination, supports a deeper acquisition of language, vocabulary and knowledge and generates stronger links between subjects as well as promoting a love of reading. 

To ensure that children experience real breadth and depth in their learning, each theme has been devised with a clear thread in mind that takes children on an engaging journey through the curriculum. These help them to make links, apply skills and knowledge and build upon prior learning in a variety of ways. 

Curriculum leaders carefully sequence the expectations from Development Matters and the National Curriculum across Year groups to ensure coverage and provide clear opportunities to build on prior learning of knowledge and vocabulary. They have generated progression of skills documents and progression of vocabulary documents to support teaching, learning and assessment. Allowing children to revisit and build on skills as they move through the school ensures we provide a progressive curriculum so that children know more and remember more. 

Themes begin with a launch, and include opportunities to explore, deepen, reflect and celebrate, through experiences, trips and events both inside and outside of school. Learning is contextualised through a termly History, Geography or Science theme that makes purposeful links. Some subjects and objectives are taught discreetly. 

Implementation

The formal learnt curriculum is guided by The National Curriculum and Development Matters. Vehicles for teaching this include:  

• Inclusion through teaching for mastery – ensures our children cover the same content through a mastery approach, enabling all children to achieve their true potential through careful support and scaffolding. 
• Metacognitive and retrieval opportunities – enables our learner to embed knowledge to become ‘understanding’ and to apply methods of transferring knowledge from children’s working memory to their long term memory. 
• Oracy, vocabulary and reading for pleasure – are built across the curriculum to aid metacognition and teaching for mastery. 
• Catholic Social Teaching – is embedded into our themes to support children to make links and help them to be givers rather than takers in society. Year groups’ select one CST principle that they will focus on each term and teach this principle discreetly to help to deepen their understanding. Other CST principles are then woven into teaching and learning where appropriate. 
• Growth mind-set – helping the children be the very best they can be with high aspirations for themselves and others. This gives them a better awareness of how they learn, the emotions linked to this and the transferable learning skills needed to reach their potential. 
• Restorative practice – helps our children to develop stronger relationships, and become problem solvers within these so that they are resilient to overcome adversity within their lives. 
• Extracurricular opportunities – provides a wide range of addition experiences for the children to inspire them within their learning. This also enables us to seek out and develop the talents in every child. e.g. (trips, festivals, clubs, assembles, liturgies, mass, chaplaincy, school councils, residential, outdoor learning, production)

                                                                              
The learning cycle is expanded further in our Teaching and Learning Policy

Impact

As a school we continuously reflect on the impact that our curriculum has on our whole school community, in helping our children to know more and remember more as well as preparing them to be the best they can be as global citizens. 

We use both qualitative and quantitative means to reflect on this impact: 

• Teachers evaluate children’s knowledge, understanding and learning characteristics through a range of informal and formal means. This informs the further implementation of the curriculum. This is detailed further in our Assessment Recording Reporting And Tracking (Arrt) Policy
• Data in its widest sense forms the strategic direction of each subject. This is detailed in our Subject Leadership Guidance booklet.
• Children are self- regulated learners who can talk about their strengths and weaknesses, and can motivate themselves to engage, and improve, their learning by using tools such as the learning pit, self and peer assessments, metacognition strategies. All of these help them to apply their learning both now and in their future lives to satisfy the ambitions that they have for themselves. 
• Children are righteous citizens who have high ambitions for themselves, are economically active and give to society in a variety of ways. They value the gifts and talents that everyone brings to the diverse local and global community in which they live. 

St Gregory's  School Curriculum Overviews By Year Group
Please note that as our curriculum evolves across the academic year, year group overviews may be tweaked and changed. See overviews by year group HERE.