Curriculum rationale – a blend of knowledge, skills and character education
The staff, parents and Governors at St Mary’s Fields Academy have developed a progressive curriculum based on the shared understanding of what we want our children take with them into their future lives. We deliver a curriculum that is relevant for our cohort of children in the fact that it is designed to develop the whole child and prepare them for their future journey. Its design unlocks their potential, allows them to explore and discover, and gives them knowledge. Children will be motivated to want to know more and be able to do more. We aim to produce life-long learners through a curriculum based on a blend of skills, knowledge and character education.
We deliver a curriculum that
We deliver a curriculum that
We deliver a curriculum that
Homework is given out weekly and is usually work sheet based. Children that complete their homework will be receive praise and be rewarded with class rewards.
Children are not punished if they fail to complete the work. However discreet homework registers are kept and if a child’s progress stalls this will be discussed with the child and their parents.
We accept that not every activity will capture children and parents’ imagination and that weekends can sometimes be busy & valuable family time. We believe that homework should be enjoyable and manageable for all concerned and that if it becomes a chore/burden/source of conflict it ceases to be a constructive aspect of teaching and learning.
We hope the children are motivated by positive incentives and by the tasks themselves.
Year groups should have the following tasks to do at home throughout the week: reading book, spellings, times tables, English homework, Maths homework, Family Project. In KS1 Maths may be given one week and English the next.
Homework is differentiated where required.
The school encourages all families to take part in the ‘Family project’, which will be set each half term. This will be an enquiry-based question to answer in any way that the family likes . It may link to History/Geography, Science, RE or something in English. Families that choose to take part in the project are asked to submit in the penultimate week before half term. These dates are on the website calendar. A £5 book token will be awarded to a winning family in each phase. Projects will be displayed during school ‘Book Looks’.
The writing non-negotiables up to and including your year group should be on display in the classroom. Whatever the Learning Objective is, these things should be pick-up on and corrected in marking. The aim is that the majority of children are fully proficient in this area by the end of that year.
Year group | Writing non-negotiable | Spelling non-negotiable |
1 | Letter formation – letters should be on the line and the correct size | High frequency words (as appropriate) |
2 | Capital letters to start sentences and for proper nouns. Full stops. | All high frequency words |
3 | Apostrophes for contraction (autumn term) and possession (rest of the year) | Homophones (including where and were). |
4 | Choosing when to end a sentence accurately using full stops, exclamation marks of question marks. Ensuring that children recognise the difference between a phrase and a sentence and avoiding misuse of commas and conjunctions. | -ed endings and double letters |
5 | The commas: in speech punctuation, to separate clauses (including parenthesis) and to separate fronted adverbials. | Suffixes –ly and –ful |
6 | Punctuation juggling: ensuring understanding and use of the full range of punctuation taught at primary level () dashes, hyphens, ; : |