At St Barnabas CEVC Primary School we plan our curriculum based on the new National Curriculum.  

Learning is planned around topics and themes giving new learning a context. Our curriculum is enriched through visits, both day and residential, and through visitors, who are experts in their field, coming into school to work alongside staff and children.  We also welcome the support of parents within the school.  We encourage parents who are able to come into school and either share their skills and interests with the children or support us with activities such as reading.

Teaching is not something we do to the children: we encourage them to be active participants, solving problems, developing independent skills and learning about themselves as learners.  In this way we equip our pupils with the skills that will not only enable them to be successful in academic terms, but also enable them to face new challenges or uncertainty with confidence.  Our curriculum encourages all pupils to take an active role and become reliable members of our community, respecting British values.

Curriculum content and organisation

Children in the reception class will follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum.  Pupils in Years 1 and 2 will work towards Key Stage 1 of the National Curriculum and those in 3, 4, 5 and 6 will work through Key Stage 2.

Foundation Stage (click to follow link to Early Years Foundation Stage guidance)

The first year at school in the reception class is known as the Foundation Phase.  This Phase is a continuation from the experiences your child will have had at nursery or pre-school.  The curriculum is divided into Prime Areas and Specific Areas of learning and progress is measured against our own and national goals. Specific detail on how we teach reading are included within the section on the National Curriculum below.

Prime Areas

PSED (Personal, Social, Emotional Development).  This includes 3 areas: making relationships, self-confidence and self-awareness and managing feelings and behaviour.

Communication and Language.  This includes: listening and attention, Understanding and speaking

Physical Development. This is divided into two areas: moving and handling and health and self-care

Specific Areas

Literacy: reading and writing

Mathematics: numbers and shape space and measures

Understanding the World: people and communities, the world and technology

Expressive Arts and Design: exploring and using media and materials and being imaginative.

Learning experiences within and across these areas provide the children with an excellent skill base and an enthusiasm for learning which is then developed further as they begin the national curriculum in Year 1.

From Year 1 onwards the children follow the National Curriculum.

The National Curriculum  (click to follow link to detail of the National Curriculum) 

The National Curriculum provides the school with clear guidance and expectations for learning and attainment within each subject area.   Wherever possible the National Curriculum content is taught through topics which give a meaningful context to children’s learning and support links between subject areas.

In addition to the national curriculum subjects, we also teach Religious Education and Personal, Social and Health Education.  The following is an introduction to each curriculum area but your child’s class teacher or the Headteacher will be happy to provide you with more details should you require them.

Intent & Experiences

At St Barnabas CEVC Primary School, we want our children to be so enthused by their learning that they can’t wait to tell their parents about their day when they get home.

We have prioritised making learning experiences enriching, such as educational visits and lessons which enthuse our children, with presentation and high quality work being a key focus of all that we do.                              

Our teachers do this by our Termly Focus Overviews:  

Knowledge Organisers

At St Barnabas CEVC Primary School, we use Knowledge Organisers to help children to learn the essential knowledge they need for each topic they study. A Knowledge Organiser sets out in detail the essential information that children should know and understand by the end of the topic.  It also acts as a tool to support children in retaining and retrieving knowledge for life-long learning.

We have developed our Knowledge Organisers to support the delivery of the curriculum, with each one starting with the knowledge children should already have from previous learning. Each Knowledge Organiser also has an in-class quiz to help children recall the knowledge, vocabulary, terms and definitions.

As well as learning the knowledge from the current topic, it is also useful for children to go back to previous Knowledge Organisers and re-read and revise these so that the information from previous learning is not forgotten.

Term 5

Term 4

Term 3

Term 2

Term 1

Spaced Retrieval Practice

Retrieval practice is the act of retrieving something from your memory (often with the help of a cue).

Recent research has shown that retrieval is critical for robust, durable, long-term learning. Every time a memory is retrieved, that memory becomes more accessible in the future. Retrieval also helps us create coherent and integrated mental representations of complex concepts, the kind of deep learning necessary to solve new problems and draw new inferences.

A really useful starting point to understand retrieval practice, interleaving and spacing can be found here.

At St Barnabas Primary School, our pupils are given 'Recap and Review' tasks (Can you Still?), each with an expanded interval of time for retrieval information; this creates a deeper level of processing of the learned content in long term memory at each point.