Vision

St Nicholas Church of England Primary School’s curriculum provides a hands on, investigative approach with memorable moments and challenge for all. Through this, children develop high expectations and aspirations for themselves, curiosity and a passion to drive their own learning. Our values and moral code underpin an ethos of care within our safe, nurturing environment. We provide a journey of learning whilst developing each child holistically and recognising the uniqueness of every individual learner.

Intent  

At St Nicholas we hold children at the heart of our curriculum. We promote a strong ethos of care and provide the children with a safe, nurturing environment for pupils to learn and develop personally.

Within the PSHE curriculum we have a strong emphasis on children developing their emotional literacy, building their resilience and nurturing their mental and physical health. We provide the children with learning experiences to help them to navigate the world around them, as well as developing positive relationships with themselves and others too.

The RE curriculum embodies our school’s mission statement of “Dream Big and Shine Bright”. We develop learners that feel inspired and motivated. The curriculum develops pupils’ abilities to connect, critically reflect upon, evaluate and apply their learning to their own growing understanding of religion and belief of themselves, the world and human experience.

As a Thrive school we support wellbeing to improve attendance, behaviour and attainment and to provide a safe and nurturing environment for all pupils’ personal development and journey. Thrive offers a whole-setting approach to supporting the right-time social and emotional development of all children and young people.

We use Thrive techniques to understanding better what children are trying to communicate through their behaviour so we can promote their positive mental health, improve their ability to learn and open their doors to a bright future. We embody the Thrive approach is everything that we do.

St Nicholas School promotes equality of opportunity, an inclusive environment to develop pupils’ characters and demonstrates and empowers pupils in life skills and values. We promote the fundamental British Values of democracy, rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.

Implementation 

Our PSHE curriculum is delivered throughout the Jigsaw scheme, which is a comprehensive approach with a mindfulness focus. The scheme is embedded throughout our school, with six half termly topics being delivered across six lessons. Each year group across the school completes the same puzzle at the same time with each individual lesson being tailored specifically to each year group and cohort.

In R.E we use an enquiry led syllabus agreed by Coventry and Warwickshire. The teaching of Christianity is largely taught through “Understanding Christianity” resource.  

Class teachers have been following the Thrive approach to teaching for several years across all curriculum areas and throughout school life. Thrive helps children and young people feel safe, supported and ready to learn. By focusing on the emotional needs of different age groups, informed by established neuroscience and attachment research, pupils will develop their personal development journey in a secure and nurturing environment.

A SMSC session is to be timetabled by each class every other Friday (when they are not attending Celebration assembly).  Each half term the class teacher will cover in this session:-

1. One of the British Values,
2. An Action contained on the Class Thrive Action Plan,
3. Work to support the half termly Value for Life,
4. Work to support PREVENT (including racisms, stereotyping, prejudices) and/or to promote pupils’ own personal development and understanding topics such as positive identity, acceptance of diversity etc - with the emphasis being on pupil voice. The class teacher will choose the topic to cover depending on the assessed needs of each cohort.

Throughout the teaching of the curriculum teachers will address and sensitively educate pupils on SMSC topics and areas. This will be done by reinforcing our moral code, referring to our strategies such as 3B4Me, our vision of Dream Big Shine Bright and rewards such as housepoints and golden tickets.

Impact 

At the heart of the curriculum at St Nicholas is knowledge, understanding, curiosity and empathy. We work to provide opportunities, challenges, discussions and activities that will prepare pupils for their personal development journey and to empathise with the personal journey of others by celebrating tolerance, diversity and uniqueness.

We use Insight to track a pupil’s progress across the curriculum which allows teachers to assess pupil’s achievements against specific statements. Assessment opportunities exist within each lesson for the pupils to assess themselves. At the end of each PSHE lesson children reflect on the lesson and the end of both PSHE and RE they RAG rate their learning intention.

PSHE Jigsaw lessons and RE lessons are differentiated accordingly to ensure that pupils of all abilities are able to access the curriculum. The teaching of RE allows pupils to develop skills of questioning, reading and interpretation. It provides opportunities to develop their own thinking and understanding the world and empathise with diversity. 

At St Nicholas we encourage and value pupil feedback. We want children to be the drivers of their own learning journey, therefore we ensure that they have the opportunity to take part in pupil discussions about any part of the curriculum including PSHE, RE and SMSC areas.