Curriculum

The Curriculum is at the heart of everything we do at Grace Mary. We place a huge emphasis on reading as a key ingredient for success in children's lives. 

Subject leaders take pride in preparing a curriculum which is deliberately planned so that children acquire the knowledge and skills required for them to transition to their next stage of learning. The curriculum is sequential and children do not  move on to new learning until essential knowledge is acquired and mastered.

The Grace Mary Pillars are an essential component of how we work towards achieving our vision and aims. The three pillars are:

1) Exemplary Behaviour

2) Knowledge Rich Curriculum

3) Explicit Teaching

We recognise that if any of the pillars is removed, our impact on the children would be signifcantly reduced. For example,  while we may have exemplary behaviour and explicit teaching, without a well-sequenced curriculum pupils will not develop their knowledge of the world systematically over time.

If you would like to speak to anyone regarding the Grace Mary Curriculum, please do not hesitate to contact the school office. 

One of our three pillars is 'Exemplary Behaviour'. We recognise that, in order to create a safe environment for all our pupils where they can maximise their learning, we must maintain the highest possible standards of pupil behaviour.  
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We have developed a 'Behaviour Curriculum' which is explicitly taught to the children throughout the year. We treat behaviour like any other subject. It is taught sequentially and in small chunks and learning is often revisited and quizzed.  This document above sets out the rules and routines that we explicitly teach pupils.  We believe this helps to build pupils' character by supporting them to develop the habits and attitudes that will enable them to succeed in later life.

Classroom Rules

We have spent significant time over the last 5 years developing a curriculum that is:

- Challenging

- Coherent

- Current

- Comprehensive

Our overriding aim is to ensure that we improve the lives of the children by enabling them to enjoy learning and fulfil their potential by developing the resilience, curiosity, knowledge and skills required to be successful. There is a moral purpose and underlying rationale to all we do.

One of our main aims of our curriculum is to offer the children a window to see how the world works. We want our children to remember essential knowledge and receive the cultural capital that will help them make sense of the world around them.

We also want our curriculum to be a mirror that enables children to see themselves in the curriculum. We want children to consider how they feel about what they are learning and begin to think about their own personal response to this. 

Please click on the document above for a more detailed explanation of our curriculum intent, implementation and impact.

We want your children to have the best teachers and the best teaching. We invest a lot of time developing teachers to be the best version of themselves. We use the latest research as well our vast years of experience to develop and support teachers. 

To help we this, we have developed a teaching and learning handbook which contains key principles that we expect all staff to know, understand and use within lessons. 

The link above shows extracts from the handbook. 

Further information on individual subjects can be found in the subject information page below.

Further information on the National Curriculum can also be found on the DfE website, which can be accessed by clicking here