Our Curriculum
As a Catholic School, a minimum of 10% of the teaching timetable across the school is dedicated to RE. However, in reality, the RE Curriculum and the development of Christian values underpin every aspect of learning in school and are being developed at all times. Throughout the school week, children are involved in daily collective worship and there are many good opportunities for reflection.
Change School
We are a ‘Change School’ with Creative Partnerships, a nationally recognised programme which brings about a sustainable whole school culture change over two years.
Creative Curriculum
Our curriculum has recently undergone some exciting changes and we now offer a creative curriculum. This means that our curriculum is designed to provide opportunities for creative learning. Each year there are a number of whole school themes (contexts for learning) broken down into a focus for each class. Children acquire a good range of skills through this cross-curricular approach to learning and also have excellent opportunities to use and apply their mathematical, ICT and literacy skills in a context.
Discrete Teaching of Skills
Although we feel that children learn most effectively in a real-life context or when highly motivated by a theme, some of the learning takes place in short discrete sessions. For example, all children are in a mixed age phonics group based on their phase and take part in regular phonics sessions. Some of the mathematics teaching takes place in short discrete sessions and elsewhere they have opportunities to use and apply this, for example, when solving real-life problems.
Pupil Voice
Through effective pupil voice, all children have an input into what the curriculum is going to look like each half term. This means that all children have an opportunity to make suggestions or ask their own key questions in the early stages of planning a topic. Teachers incorporate the children’s ideas into the planning and ensure that there are relevant opportunities. A great example of this is children identifying an educational visit for their class, organising, booking and taking their class on this visit. All children at St Thomas’ feel that they can make a difference to the school by being involved in decision making either at a class level or a strategic school leadership level.
ICT
As an E-Confident School, we are committed to net generation learning, constantly looking at new and evolving technologies to equip our children for their future career. We have invested carefully in technology and learning in ICT has been significantly enhanced by the wireless internet access throughout the school and our ultra-portable laptops. This now means that children have wider access to our Virtual Learning Environment and increased opportunities to work with Web 2.0. Children are also enjoying using Nintendo DSi consoles in maths lessons and this is having a clear impact on progress. We are working towards the ICT Mark with the other two schools in our collaboration and we have recently introduced a joint E-Safety Policy.
Language Learning
The Modern Foreign Languages provision at our school is fantastic. We are running Hocus and Lotus sessions in Foundation and Key Stage One in both French and Italian. This is a psycho-linguistic method of learning languages. Hocus and Lotus cartoons are created on the basis of the teaching and learning method known as the “narrative format” which was developed by Professor Traute Taeschner at University ‘La Sapienza’ in Rome. The foreign language is learned through the creation of a context in which we speak, live and act exclusively in the new language: it is the fantastic world of Hocus and Lotus. The two little dinocrocs, with their dinosaur tail and their crocodile tooth, experience fantastic and exciting adventures together with the children. With Hocus & Lotus the children engage in a variety of activities characterised by love and emotional involvement and structured in such a way that they respect the rhythm, time and skills of each and every one of them, by going through the different stages of native language acquisition process.
At Key Stage 2, we have introduced the Northumberland Scheme based on developing thinking skills through the discovery of a range of traditional stories and fairy tales.
From September 2010, children will also have an opportunity to learn Mandarin as we are involved in a British Council Connecting Classrooms project with a group of schools in Chengdu, China.
International Links
We are part of the Connecting Classrooms project working with All Saints and the British Council and currently have a fantastic link with a group of schools in Uganda. Children are contributing to a Blog on our VLE sharing experiences and developing greater intercultural understanding . This link will be celebrated in the summer when six students from Uganda visit us and our Year 5 will take part in a sporting event at All Saints.
We have just been successful in our application to work with a group of Sheffield schools as part of another Connecting Classrooms project to link with a group of schools in Chengdu, China. One aspect of this project involves children learning Mandarin.
This exciting work will most certainly support our application for the International Schools Award.
The New Primary Curriculum
Staff and children are excited about the new primary curriculum. This is a great opportunity for our school to look carefully at what we really want for the children. The thinking behind our current curriculum redesign places us in an excellent position to embrace the new primary curriculum. We are currently looking closely at this new curriculum and exploring ways of making this work most effectively to meet the needs of our children and to offer the best possible learning experiences. Watch this space for more information!
Extra Curricular Activities
Out of Lesson time activities are provided by the staff to develop special interests and skills.
These may include: Art Club, Badminton Club, Book Club. Choir, Computer Club, Drama Club, Football, Irish Dancing, Language Clubs, Netball, Recorders, Rugby League Club, Theatre Visits and others.
The full list of activities provided at each School can be obtained from the School Office. Parents and guardians should be aware that whilst costs are kept as low as possible, it is sometimes necessary to charge for extra curricular activities – see below.
