The Vision for Our Curriculum

To ensure our children are part of a Faith filled community, where the children are at the centre of everything.

The children at Our Lady of Lourdes will grow in FAITH, LOVE, HOPE and EXCELLENCE. Everyone will be given the opportunity to reach their full potential by becoming CONFIDENT, RESILIENT, INCLUSIVE, INDEPENDENT, YOUNG LEARNERS.

Curriculum INTENT

The curriculum at Our Lady of Lourdes is built around our Catholic Faith, the National Curriculum, The RED and the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework.  Our mission statement is at the heart of everything we do – ‘Living and sharing the message of Christ, in peace we move forward together.’ Children experience a joyful curriculum with a positive ethos. There is a huge emphasis on team work and developing a supportive, respectful culture. Our curriculum is inclusive, where our children take responsibility, work hard and succeed as a team.

Our school is based in Partington - this is an area of deprivation.  Our curriculum powerfully addresses social disadvantage by ensuring that it meets the particular needs of our children. Our baseline assessments indicate that starting points are lower than national. Therefore ….

• There is a huge emphasis on speech and Language from Nursery through to Year 6.
• Our curriculum promotes a high level of parent involvement as we believe that parents are their child’s first educators and children succeed well when parents work in partnership with school.
• We recognise that we need to teach in a meaningful and connected way, ensuring our children remember more over time. We provide children with experiences and opportunities to make links and enrich our curriculum.
• Teachers plan a curriculum that is consistent and has a high level of routine. Pastoral care and support is high priority in all areas aspects of school life, providing our children with nurture and care at all times.

Curriculum IMPLEMENTATION

R.E. is a core subject in our school, alongside English, Maths and Science, and therefore we devote 10% of our curriculum time to its delivery.

Religious Education is carefully planned and delivered to reflect our deep commitment to nurturing faith, love, and understanding in every child. Our teaching is rooted in the RED (Religious Education Directory) and we have gradually introduced this through The Vine and the Branches scheme. As a school dedicated to shaping high-quality RE. Planning is detailed and there is a sharp focus on knowing and understanding religious vocabulary. Teaching ensures that there are regular planned opportunities to re-visit, review and consolidate prior learning through our Flashback four approach. In our books you will see each topic introduced by a detailed knowledge organiser which clearly sets out the knowledge and vocabulary that is to be taught. There is a consistent approach to re-visiting learning from previous units throughout the school.  Lessons are thoughtfully sequenced, incorporating scripture, liturgy, doctrine, and Catholic social teaching, while encouraging critical thinking, spiritual reflection, and active engagement with faith in action.

The ways of knowing describe the skills that pupils develop as they progress through the religious education curriculum. We refer now to ways of knowing rather than standards or levels, since progress in religious education is not only something that concerns performance and summative assessment. They are called ways of knowing since they describe the holistic ways human beings experience education: as a growth in understanding, as a creative and critical assimilation, and as a recognition of the application of learning to one’s own life. The three ways of knowing are ‘understand’, ‘discern’, and ‘respond’.