Embedded throughout the St Catherine's curriculum are the values and vision we share as a school.  There is a strong emphasis on key qualities such as respect, truthfulness, cooperation and honesty; not only through the topic areas taught, but in the way they are taught. Teaching is fully inclusive, helping children to grow a love of learning across all areas; different learning styles, interests and skills are valued, developed and respected, ultimately enabling the children to flourish in life.

At St Catherine's, the core subjects taught are maths, English, science and RE.  Foundation subjects taught are art/design, computing, design/technology, modern foreign languages, geography, history, music, PE and PSHE.  There are focus weeks throughout the year, allowing opportunities to delve deeper into the wider curriculum.  Focus weeks such as Science week, Multi-faith week, 'take-one-book' and humanities weeks.  There are also extra-curricular activities offered at St Catherine’s, such as various sports clubs, sewing/gardening clubs, music lessons etc, which we organise in order to enrich children’s school experience.  

Teachers at St Catherine’s plan with their year group partners in order to: maximise use of resources; develop challenging and creative lessons for their pupils; and to give further opportunities for differentiation across classes and ensure equality of provision.  Topics within each year group are the same; primarily the children are taught in mixed ability groups, with differentiation in a range of forms to support individual needs.  Home learning supports the lessons being taught each term. Teachers will inform parents by class newsletter, at the start of each term, of the topics to be delivered and home learning questions, and this information can also be found on the school website.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to the cross curricular nature of our learning, topics may not be taught in the order in which they appear in the documents below, but will be covered at some point in the academic year.
More detail pertaining to the curriculum taught in each year group can be found in the termly class letters given to families and on the 'class pages' and 'curriculum' sections of this website.

Key Stage One:

In KS1, the children have daily phonics lessons in small groups. Teachers plan their own sessions supported by 'Little Wandle' (a systematic programme for teaching phonics skills). In these sessions, children learn how to segment and blend words for reading and writing. The also learn how to read and write the Common Exception Words. In Year 3, children begin the 'No Nonsense Spelling' scheme in order to learn and apply spelling rules. 

In school and at home, the children read a wide variety of books from the 'Big Cat phonics' scheme, as well as others, which help them to develop their use of synthetic phonics and support them in building their own vocabulary. In guided reading sessions, children also have plenty of opportunity to develop their speaking, listening, comprehension and prosody skills. 

Should you have any queries or questions which are not answered here, please do not hesitate to contact the class teacher directly for more information.

Please click on the links below to view individual subject areas.