Curriculum

Whole School Curriculum Overview - Themes

Whole School Curriculum - Yearly Planner

At All Saints Carshalton, our Christian vision: “For each one of us to shine as God’s light, believing we can make a difference in His World….” (Matthew 5:16) is at the heart of our curriculum. We want to equip our pupils with the knowledge, skills, experiences and values that they need to ‘shine as a light’ and be successful in life.

We aim to give our pupils the best start by providing a loving, supportive and stimulating environment where they feel valued as individuals within our school community and are given the opportunity to thrive.

Our nine values: Faith, Hope, Love, Trust, Courage, Respect, Forgiveness, Friendship and Peace permeate through our curriculum and all that we do. As a school, we share these values, can articulate what they mean to us and aim to  live by them, developing the Christian faith and enabling our pupils to grow spiritually, socially, intellectually and emotionally to ‘trust in God and give of their best’.

Our curriculum is designed to be relevant, meaningful and personalised to meet the needs of our children and to provide a secure foundation of appropriate knowledge, skills and experiences. Our thematic approach allows pupils to make connections between their own ideas and learning and apply these to real life in situations.

Our curriculum framework is based around 5 key drivers:

Christian Values

At All Saints Carshalton, we aim to support the development of the ‘whole’ child, educationally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. We believe that by children understanding and applying our Christian values to all aspects of school life, we can help them flourish and become independent, responsible and confident individuals who show respect to both others and themselves as well as their environment. 

Our nine Building Learning Powers, which link to our school values, help children to apply these values to their learning and to their daily lives. Problem solving activities encourage resilience and show courage. Participation in year group assemblies help children to build their confidence and to put their faith in God. By providing opportunities for children to apply these values to their learning, we aim to develop a growth mind-set in which children are willing to have a go, learn from mistakes and take risks, knowing that God is by their side.

Our aim is that these values will support the children to go on and lead happy, productive and positive lives.

Inclusivity

We believe that children learn best when they are happy and when they are in an environment in which they feel safe, valued and supported. At All Saints Carshalton, each child is celebrated as a unique individual.

Our inclusive environment allows pupils at all levels equality of opportunity to gain full access to the curriculum, challenge themselves and reach their full potential.

We celebrate achievements from within school and also take time to recognise the many extra-curricular achievements of our pupils outside of school. As both our local and school communities becomes more diverse, we have made sure that our curriculum has also evolved with the addition of new texts and themes representing different cultures and celebrating diversity.

We recognise that some children need extra nurturing and encouragement and make sure that these children are given the appropriate support needed to thrive.

Our aim is to help children to understand their place in our world, feel valued and to appreciate and celebrate the traditions and differences of others.

Broad Experiences

Our thematic curriculum has been designed by our teachers to make the learning experiences of all the children stimulating, contextualised, challenging and memorable. We want our children to develop a love of learning so that they become curious learners with a desire to learn a range of new skills, acquire new knowledge and have new experiences.

We believe that exciting, engaging and immersive opportunities have a positive and lasting impact on children and so hook children into new themes with an entry point. Meeting a ‘character’ from the past, walking through the local environment or experiencing life as an Ancient Greek help children contextualise their learning and make links across the curriculum and to prior learning.  

Within the classroom, a range of activities and tasks are designed to support the learning intentions, allowing all children to access the learning and encouraging them to take on different thinking styles such as creative, logical and critical.

Educational trips are used to support the curriculum and use is made of our local area, the Church, local parks and the River Wandle allowing children to know and take pride in where they are from.

In Years 5 and 6, residential trips take place, giving children the opportunities to develop key life skills and enabling personal development.

Challenge

Our curriculum has been tailored to take into account the higher than average starting points of our school community and its growing diversity. The curriculum helps to ensure that the needs of individuals and small groups are met within an environment of high quality teaching, as well as targeted support and interventions where appropriate to stretch and challenge our children to achieve their full potential. 

We want our pupils respectively to 'shine aa God’s light', but to understand that this is best achieved if you work together and celebrate the achievements of others. While we have strong outcomes within our core subjects, we are equally ambitious in our vision to ensure that our offer encompasses the full range of curriculum opportunities.

Community

At All Saints Carshalton, we place a strong emphasis on 'community' and 'learning together' and believe that our Christian values play an integral role in helping to shape our vision. We want our children to be aware of their local community, the diversity that exists within it and discover how they can play an increasing role within this larger 'family'.

We believe that it is important for children to form positive relationships with others and support our children to work effectively with others by giving them opportunities to develop the leadership skills and traits that they need for success beyond the classroom. 

We are committed to working closely with others (parents/ carers, All Saints Church, other schools, MAT, subject experts and specialists) to further enhance and extend our curriculum offer to ensure that our children achieve their personal best.

The National Curriculum lies at the heart of what is taught at All Saints Carshalton. It sets out a clear, full and statutory entitlement to learning for all children aged five to eleven and determines the content of what will be taught. It is preceded by the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum which is taught to children aged three to five.

Our curriculum is not static and is subject to ongoing development in order to enhance the delivery to our children and remove potential barriers to learning. The current National Curriculum is divided into Core and Foundation subjects and is taught to children in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.

The Core Curriculum subjects are:

• English
• Mathematics
• Religious Education
• Science
• Computing

The foundation subjects are:

• Art, Design and Technology
• Geography
• History
• Modern Foreign Languages
• Music
• Personal Social and Health Education
• Physical Education

Each subject has a programme of study which specifies the knowledge, skills and concepts that the children will be expected to acquire as they progress through both primary and secondary school. There will be times when these subjects are best taught discretely and systematically, and other times when they will be taught in a cross-curricular way enabling the children to develop their knowledge, skills and understanding in a broader sense.

In order to ensure that our curriculum offer is of high quality and has strong impacts on all learners, we work to ensure that the elements below shape the leadership of each curriculum area:

All leaders at the school work hard to ensure that their specific curriculum leadership helps to secure a strong offer for pupils across the school. Subject leaders are accountable for ensuring that their curriculum areas offer a strong and engaging experience for our children. They are also responsible for ensuring curriculum progression through the school (breadth and depth). This ensures that specific skills get more challenging as pupils move through the school. We want our curriculum to be delivered in such a way that it is inclusive to all children at the school, regardless of starting point. We want our practitioners to be strong in their delivery across the curriculum and invest in their professional development.