At St Columb Major Academy, we pride ourselves on our curriculum, designed to meet the needs and other interests of our school community, the local area and national and global contexts, using the National Curriculum as the basis. We believe we have created a curriculum and ethos that develops both the hearts and minds of our children, developing their resilience, perseverance, compassion, wisdom, forgiveness and respect. We have considered and identified any barriers to future attainment focusing on these in our curriculum. These are emotional needs (such as low self-esteem and not being ready to learn); low social awareness and understanding (such as tolerance); limited life-experiences (such as low aspirations for their future lives) and limited vocabulary due to a lack of rich language environments.  

Our Vision: 

To provide a safe challenging environment where each individual is valued and can build positive foundations for learning for life which is underpinned by the six values listed above. 

Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) is at the heart of our curriculum, which is designed around our mission statement: Happy : Hardworking : Successful 

 

Class Information for Parents: 

Our curriculum begins with our children’s first-hand experiences building on each child’s starting points and develops, year on year, building from the school community to the wider world and beyond. This is planned through a creative and thematic approach to learning, where topics are designed to complement and build on one another with clear progression in skills and knowledge and links so that, in subsequent year groups, they will be able to explore concepts deeper, applying their knowledge in different contexts.    

Each subject's curriculum has been designed to ensure coherence across the school, so that the learning journey for each of our child covers a full range of experiences to equally develop both curricular and personal understanding in a meaningful way. Every subject has its own integrity, and our curriculum is designed and taught to ensure that we remain true to the underlying principles of each subject. Using the Foundation Stage & National Curriculums, each subject has been planned around a progression of skills and knowledge. Links have been made between subjects, creating topics, with the aim to make learning purposeful, relevant and to reinforce ideas and concepts within and across year groups through both curricular and  extra - curricular opportunities.

Within Literacy, our Talk for Writing approach uses a variety of genres and texts to develop the pupils’ understanding of language, both written and spoken. Reading is also developed using a variety of extracts from high-quality books and texts which enable learners to develop their reading skills. 

For Maths, we use a small-steps mastery approach based on our ongoing work with the Maths Hub. This ensures our pupils have a daily focus on Fluency, practising basic numeracy skills from prior learning, as well as developing their understanding of new concepts in a way which supports their learning until they can independently reason and apply their knowledge in different problem-solving contexts, supported by a variety of resources, including White-Rose. 

At St Columb Major Academy, we have 3 measures of curriculum impact, which we believe are essential in ensuring our children are well-rounded, happy and successful individuals. 

1.           What we learn (developing our children's knowledge and understanding)  
    
2.           Who we are (developing our children's character, sense of belonging and

                     responsibility)

3.           How we behave (developing our children as self-aware, successful learners) 

 

Throughout the year, we monitor and evaluate the impact of the curriculum design on pupil’s learning. In individual subjects, learning is reviewed through children’s outcomes in the classroom, whether practical, written or spoken and National Assessments give overall summative judgements for FS, Y2, Y4 and Y6 in core areas. Through our observations and pupil conferencing, we reflect on our pupils’ personal skills and behaviours to assess their personal development journey over time.

We are on a curriculum development journey, having recently reviewed and adapted our curriculum to maximise the learning opportunities for all our pupils. The impact of these changes will deepen over time, but from our current evidence, we know that our pupils make good progress academically, socially and emotionally from their starting points.  

In the future, we are aiming for all our pupils to be more independent in their learning, know and remember more, be able to question and explore the world around them and be excited to transition to secondary school on the next phase of their educational journey. 

Displays

Our displays here at St Columb Major ACE Academy are used as a fantastic way to showcase how well our children are doing, whilst showing the importance of presentation and respecting their learning environment. We also believe that creating a safe and happy school is one factor in enabling our pupils to thrive. This means we work hard to generate exciting, interactive and informative displays that mean something to the children and that look great!

A variety of subjects that reflect what we do and achieve at school are covered in our displays, some of which are…

• Class displays – working walls and topic work
• Accelerated Reader displays
• Key Stage Maths and Literacy 
• PE and sporting achievement 
• Hall displays that cover healthy eating and assemblies.
• Eco Council
• Intervention 
• Music achievement and concerts
• ‘Wow Work’ 
• Art and Topic 
• British Values

In the classroom we like to showcase the achievements of our pupils, encourage positive attitudes to presentation and show that their learning and work is valued. We also use displays to help support children in their learning, through informative posters and resources. We have introduced ‘Working Walls’ this year, that change with what is being taught in Maths and Literacy. Accelerated Reader displays also show the progress the children are making with their reading in a fun and interactive way, using for example racing tracks, waves and a woodland scene.

We also like to bring a fun and imaginative element to our school. So in addition to the above, we have enjoyed creating artworks that can entertain the children, such as murals in the stairwell up to the Year 6 classrooms and displaying the lanterns the children have made over the past few years.

We will continue to create displays to enhance our school, allowing our children to feel happy and engaged, giving them a place to be proud of and belong. We hope you have enjoyed this small visual insight into our school and we will share with you how our school develops and changes throughout the year. 

School Council

The School Council is a chance for pupils to get more involved in the way the school is run. The School Council benefits the whole school, pupils and teachers, because it provides an opportunity for pupils to communicate their feelings as well as influence decisions that are made. Councillors develop skills such as confidence, communication and negotiation. It is the responsibility of each Councillor to ensure that they express both their own views and the views of all the other pupils they represent.

 

 

At our school Mental Health and Wellbeing of our pupils, parents and staff are paramount. Please click on the button below to view our provision and impact.

 

 

Please click here to view the Equalities Statement, Accessibility Plan, Racial Equality Policy and the Equality and Diversity Policy.  Please also refer to the Everyone's Included pages of the website where you can find an information report detailing how our school identifies, assesses, and makes provision for children with Special Educational Needs and disabilities.

To find out more please contact the school office on 01637 880272 or scmajor@kernowlearning.co.uk