St Mark's CE Primary School

The Curriculum at St Mark’s

Our broad, balanced, creative and engaging curriculum is taught through a two-year cycle for each cohort; this means that children do not repeat the curriculum in their second year in the class. Click below to see the two-year cycles.

At St Mark’s, we provide a broad, balanced, creative and engaging curriculum, which includes rich, relevant and varied experiences, rooted in our school vision statement: ‘St Mark’s, with the love of Jesus, gives us wings to fly’. We are committed to supporting and developing each individual child to:

• reach their full potential, not only academically but, as confident, considerate and independent individuals. 
• have a growth mind-set and support each other.
• have self-belief and are engaged and happy in their learning.
• be life-long learners who are resilient and reflective.
• be confident to face challenges and take responsibility for their learning.

Our Early Years children follow a separate curriculum which provides them with concrete experiences some adult initiated but others initiated by the children themselves. Our Early years area provides an ideal environment for outside learning with a super new classroom area.

We are always delighted to talk to parents/carers  and prospective parents/carers about our school curriculum and they can find out more information in the following ways: through the school open days; in our prospectus; at the pre-school transition meetings; at parent workshops; through the policies on our school website; at  curriculum changes and other functions of the school and as well as one-to-one enquiries which will be responded to by the head or class teachers. 

We strongly believe in a broad, balanced, creative and engaging curriculum with learning stimulated through exciting and engaging learning journeys that give the opportunity for children to use, amongst other subjects, their English and maths skills in meaningful and purposeful contexts.

Assessment

St Mark's curriculum is planned so that pupils make connections between new learning and what has already been learned. Pupils acquire knowledge and skills through a carefully planned progressive curriculum. This curriculum has been developed this academic year to establish a more thorough progress of knowledge and skills; the next step is a carefully planned assessment cycle.

Teachers will use their own professional judgements to make formative assessments at the end of each topic/unit about whether a pupil has:

• been taught, but not yet understood

• some evidence but not yet secure

• secured the objective

• worked at greater depth

and a summative judgement at the end of the year about whether the pupil is:

• Working towards expectations
• Working inline with expectations
• Working at greater depth above expectations

Assessments will involve teachers using the unit overviews (these show the knowledge and skills associated with the unit as well as the end points) to reflect on the degree to which children have demonstrated and applied their knowledge, concepts, skills and vocabulary throughout the unit of study. Teachers will plan for assessment tasks which are single pieces of assessed work that children are asked to complete at the end of every unit covered.  This task will require children to apply everything they have learned independently of adult support.

These assessments will be uploaded via our data tracker Insight which will allow all staff to access including subject leaders.