Curriculum
St. Elizabeth’s is a single form entry Catholic Primary school situated in Wythenshawe, Manchester. Our demographic is predominantly White British, but we are becoming more culturally diverse, with Polish, Indian, Filipino, Portuguese, Afgan, Bulgarian, Czech, Lithuanian and African communities currently represented in our school.
We believe our pupils need to be outward-facing to recognise their place in society, with the potential to make a positive contribution within their own community and on a global scale.
We focus on personal development and are committed to preparing our pupils to become lifelong learners. We want to open the doors of opportunity to each pupil, developing their multiple intelligence's.
We believe our curriculum should be connected, evidencing clear progression and should demonstrate a consistent approach to teaching and learning.
We use Dimensions ‘Learning Means the World’ Curriculum. The curriculum is underpinned by four highly relevant world issues, known as the four C's:-
Culture, Communication, Conflict and Conservation
We want our pupils to fully appreciate and embrace Cultural diversity, learning about and experiencing a range of different cultural and faith heritages, as well as a range of diverse groups. We want them to learn about their place in the world, understanding and appreciating the differing backgrounds represented in the local, national and global populations. We actively and explicitly promote balanced viewpoints by teaching about cross-cultural friendship, respect, tolerance and understanding through ‘Learning Means the World’.
Developing language and vocabulary is a priority for us across the school and we passionately believe that communication is key to accessing learning and securing pupils’ future success. We are committed to developing functional English, especially reading. As a learning community, we expect teachers to ensure that their own use of English, both written and spoken, is of the highest standard in order to support pupils’ development. We feel the strong Communication focus in this curriculum model best reflects our aspirations in this area for every pupil.
We believe that life skills should be taught throughout the curriculum and an understanding of responsible, respectful behaviour is an important aspect of learning and pupils are able to view this in the light of the Conflict focused themes. They need to understand the relevance of present – day conflict and its consequences, as well as past, historic conflicts. We also put a focus on learning from conflict, not simply learning about conflict. We want our pupils to learn appropriate ways to effectively communicate in order to avoid unnecessary conflict. We want them to be able to deal with confrontation in positive ways and have a deepened understanding of how measured, socially acceptable responses will help develop their roles as responsible citizens.
We also feel our pupils need a more structured approach to developing greater awareness and appreciation of local, national and global Conservation issues and initiatives, learning how they have an important role to play in sustainability. We believe this curriculum can change hearts, minds and habits, promoting a proactive, rather than a reactive response.