Holy Family Curriculum Design
The curriculum at Holy Family has been carefully designed for our children. Everything we do is rooted in our Faith, this moral purpose runs through the core of our topics. Using the National Curriculum, our staff have carefully designed and crafted the topics that our pupils learn to ensure that they are engaging and purposeful. Where possible we have used our locality: LS Lowry, Manchester Ship Canal, Worsley Woods and we have tried to embrace some of the cultural heritage of the community we serve: the Benin Kingdom. Our topics feature a moral focus: Civil Rights, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Slavery, this supports the spiritual, moral, social and cultural learning and helps prepare our children to show a social responsibility as they progress through their school career.
Lessons have been carefully planned and sequenced, to build on knowledge (using knowledge organisers) and to develop conceptual understanding. We are ambitious that there are no barriers to achievement at Holy Family. Teacher subject knowledge has been a focus, and knowledge organisers have helped to develop this. Our lessons follow a ‘Do it, Twist it, deepen it’ format to enable pupils to develop a deep understanding and knowledge weeks throughout the school year allow our children to revisit topics to secure knowledge. The ‘Twist it’ component of our lessons allows pupils to address misconceptions and think about aspects of learning from different perspectives.
All topics are accompanied by a high quality reading text, which supports the teaching of English and reading. Reading remains at the heart of everything we do here at Holy Family. High expectations underpin our ethos, and the impact of our intention is sustained high pupil outcomes, year on year.
Our children are encouraged to work with a growth mindset at all times and work collaboratively to develop key skills in their learning: team working, reflective learning, effective participating, self-managing, resourceful thinking and independent enquiry.
We ask our children to think about their own learning and limits through metacognition, meta walks and using our fictional pupil, Blodwyn. This deepens children’s understanding of their own capacity and helps them overcome any barriers they may face day to day.
