Our Curriculum

Curriculum Intent

At St Augustine of Canterbury, we have carefully designed, planned and implemented an ACE curriculum which provides breadth for every pupil.  The strands of our school vision - "Aspiration, Character and Excellence ... through the Fruit of the Spirit" are woven through the curriculum and celebrated every Friday in Praise and Worship when ACE of the Week and Fruit of the Spirit awards are awarded.

From analysis of pupils’ learning needs, backgrounds and cultures, we have tailored our curriculum to ensure that every child is engaged, inspired and challenged.

In order to overcome the main barriers to learning that our children present, we have designed our curriculum to: 

• Increase life experiences
• Raise aspirations
• Improve language skills, including teaching the children a wide range of vocabulary.

In order to increase life experiences, our curriculum offer is 6 trips a year - this means the children in our school will undertake 42 experiences out of school, throughout their 7 years with us.  Visits are linked to the class topics and are planned to give life experiences that the children can then talk about, write about and relate to when developing their skills and knowledge across a range of areas.

We see personal development as a core purpose of the school and opportunities to grow personally and academically are interwoven into all aspects of school life. Every class is named after a ‘fruit of the Spirit’ (Galatians 5:22-23).  So we have:

Reception – Joy Class

Year 1 – Faithfulness Class

Year 2- Gentleness Class

Year 3 – Peace Class

Year 4 – Kindness Class

Year 5 – Patience Class

Year 6 – Goodness Class

As the children progress through the school, they experience their class name in a variety of ways, with the aim being to develop these within themselves.  

Our curriculum includes teaching the children about famous artists, cultural icons, scientists and sports stars so that our children can see new role models and start to think about what they want to aspire to be and achieve in their lives.  This gives our pupils an appreciation of the range of opportunities and possibilities available to them in later life.

In order to improve our children’s vocabulary, every opportunity is taken both in and out of school, to extend and enrich children’s understanding of language.  For example, at the start of every new topic we teach our pupils the vocabulary that will be associated with that topic.  We also ensure that we use rich, challenging texts with all children.  Every day the children are taught a word from our Powerful Vocabulary bank, which is taught and reinforced in every class at an age appropriate level.

At St Augustine we believe that all children should experience the feeling of success.  We place equal importance on academic development and personal development.    Through our praise and worship assemblies we not only give praise for the academic but also for children demonstrating their understanding of the Fruit of the Spirit. 

We believe that our ACE vision underpins what we do in school and support our pupils to be independent and confident learners.

The main aim of our curriculum design is to move children towards a deep level of understanding in every subject area, so that they will be able to use, develop and apply skills and knowledge in different contexts.

Our subject leaders ensure that there is progression within all subjects and across the school.  They ensure that our children have opportunities to revisit, practise and repeat learning which is essential to deep learning.  We show this in class by way of our review sessions.

As a staff we believe that there should be no glass ceiling on children’s learning and that through mastery learning and depth, all children should achieve progression. 

We encourage independence and transferable skills which encourages depth as the children can see where their learning can be adapted and applied.