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Curriculum Overview
Curriculum Overview 2026–2027
St Michael’s Church of England Primary Academy
Our Vision
Everything we teach at St Michael’s grows from a single ambition, captured in our school vision:
“Deep roots bearing fruit – enriching lives every day.”
Like the seed that takes root in good soil in the Parable of the Sower, we want every child to grow strong. Our curriculum is designed to give them deep roots – rich knowledge, real understanding and strength of character – so that they flourish academically, socially, emotionally and spiritually, and grow into confident, compassionate and responsible citizens who go on to make a positive difference to the world around them.
Our Values: ENRICH
Six values sit at the heart of our curriculum and our community. Together they spell ENRICH, and they shape how we learn, how we treat one another, and who we want our children to become: Excellence, Nurture, Respect, Integrity, Compassion, Hope.
What Our Children Learn
We are ambitious for every child. Our curriculum is broad, balanced and knowledge-rich, giving all pupils the knowledge, skills and understanding to become curious, capable and well-rounded individuals. It is built on two national frameworks that carry children from their very first days with us to the end of primary school.
- In our Nursery and Reception classes, learning follows the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework – the statutory curriculum for children from birth to five. This lays the foundations in communication and language, early reading, mathematics and personal development on which all later learning is built.
- From Year 1 to Year 6, our curriculum delivers the full National Curriculum for England, covering the core subjects (English, mathematics and science) alongside a rich range of foundation subjects.
The result is one coherent journey from age two to eleven. Knowledge is carefully sequenced so that it builds year on year, helping children make meaningful connections within and across subjects and see how it all fits together. Woven through everything is a strong emphasis on social responsibility, so that pupils learn to live out our vision and values through their actions and their contribution to their local, national and global communities.
English, Maths and Reading
English and mathematics are taught every day. They are the foundations on which everything else is built, and we give them the dedicated daily time they deserve, so that every child develops secure, confident literacy and numeracy right from the start.
Above all, we are determined that every child learns to read – and learns to love it. From the moment children join us at the age of two, we surround them with the stories, songs, rhymes and rich language that lay the foundations for reading. Systematic phonics is then taught through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, our validated phonics programme, and dedicated reading sessions three times a week build fluency and comprehension. We give reading this priority for a simple reason: it is the key that unlocks everything else. A child who reads confidently can access the whole curriculum and carry a love of reading for the rest of their life.
How we organise our curriculum
For selected foundation subjects – history, geography, art and design, and design and technology – we set aside sustained blocks of time so that children can truly lose themselves in their learning.
Depth takes time. When children have the room to explore, question, investigate and create, they make richer connections with what they already know, remember far more, and develop a real passion for the subject.
For other subjects, regular weekly practice is better suited and so each is taught in a dedicated lesson every week:
- Religious Education (RE) – weekly lessons give children space to explore Christianity and other world faiths, grapple with profound questions of belief and meaning, and connect their learning with worship and everyday life.
- Physical Education (PE) – two sessions a week, because we believe active, healthy bodies matter every bit as much as active minds.
- Spanish – taught weekly, because a language grows through frequent practice – and learning one opens children’s eyes to the wider world.
- Computing – taught weekly, giving children regular hands-on time with the technology and skills a modern world demands.
- Music – taught weekly, because musical confidence is built through regular practice, repetition and the simple joy of making music together.
- Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE) – taught weekly, because children’s wellbeing, relationships and understanding of the wider world are best nurtured through regular, ongoing conversation rather than one-off lessons.
How we deliver our curriculum
Every unit begins with a compelling “driving question” – a big, open, sometimes provocative question that gives children a genuine purpose and a real problem to get their teeth into. From there, each lesson adds another piece of the puzzle, building the knowledge and skills children need to answer that question more fully.
It means learning always has a destination. Every unit builds towards a high-quality final outcome – a piece of work, a performance or a considered response to the driving question – that children can be genuinely proud of.
Because their learning has direction and purpose, children come to see how knowledge fits together, why it matters, and – crucially – what truly excellent work looks and feels like.
Building Knowledge Over Time
Every subject has a clear progression map from Nursery to Year 6, setting out exactly what children will know and be able to do at each stage, so that every sequence of lessons builds securely on what came before.
We design learning to stick. Each lesson begins by revisiting earlier learning, helping children move important knowledge into their long-term memory. In several subjects we use “schemas” – simple visual maps of the key knowledge in a topic – which children return to, rehearse and explain in their own words as their understanding deepens. Working walls grow alongside them, capturing new knowledge and vocabulary lesson by lesson.
An Inclusive Curriculum for Every Child
Our curriculum is designed for every child – no exceptions. Inclusion is not an add-on; it runs through everything we do. We are determined to actively advantage children who might otherwise face barriers to learning, so that they achieve at least as well as their peers. This commitment reaches:
- children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND);
- children who speak English as an additional language (EAL);
- children from all ethnic, cultural and faith backgrounds;
- disadvantaged children, including those eligible for the Pupil Premium.
Every child is at the heart of every lesson. Teachers adapt their teaching so that all children can take a full and active part – for example, through scaffolding: temporary, step-by-step support that is gradually removed as a child grows in confidence and independence. Our Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Co-ordinator (SENDCo) and Pupil Premium Lead work hand in hand with teachers to understand each child and put the right support in place.
We also know that a child’s success depends on far more than what happens in the classroom. We are there for our families when they need us most – from helping with the cost of a school trip to simply being at the end of the phone.
And we want every child to see themselves, and others, reflected in what they learn. Our curriculum actively celebrates diversity: exploring what we share and what makes us different, challenging stereotypes, and nurturing a deep and genuine respect for the rich variety of the world in which we live.
Curriculum Maps
Each year group has its own curriculum map, showing exactly what children learn, and when, across the year. One map is published for each stage:
At St Michael’s, we believe a rich web of knowledge is what provides the capacity for pupils to learn even more and develop their understanding. However, this does not preclude the importance of skill. Skills matter and cannot be separated from knowledge.
Knowledge and skill are intrinsically linked: skill is a performance built on what a person knows. That performance might be physical or cognitive, but skills matter and they cannot be separated from knowledge. They are the ‘know-how’ in applying the ‘known’.
Knowledge and the capacity it provides to apply skills and deepen understanding are, therefore, essential ingredients of successful curriculum design.
Breadth, balance and progression:
We believe that children are entitled to breadth, depth and balance, and to high standards across the entire curriculum.
At St Michael’s, we have ensured that our curriculum has been crafted by answering the following questions:
- What do we want pupils to know?
- Does our curriculum contain the appropriate knowledge in an order that supports the learning?
- Is the curriculum providing pupils with the building blocks of what they need to know and be able to do, in order to succeed in each subject?
- What understanding will be demonstrated in knowledge and skills and how will progression will be demonstrated?
- What will independence in learning look like throughout the school?
- How will the curriculum coincide with our school values?
- Our curriculum ensures that we develop well-rounded citizens with a clear understanding of the school’s values: excellence, nurture, respect, integrity, compassion and hope. Our curriculum addresses negative stereotyping through investigating similarities and differences, and promoting acceptance, diversity, citizenship and human rights.
- Through independent learning, children demonstrate greater levels of resilience and motivation, and a growth mind set when faced with different types of challenge. They develop attitudes and dispositions to make a positive contribution to the world. Our daily interactions provide a regular check on this and success across the wider areas of the curriculum reflect this.
- Learners develop detailed knowledge and skills across the curriculum and, as a result, achieve well. Where relevant, this is reflected in results from national tests and examinations that meet government expectations. This ultimately means that learners are ready for the next stage of education.
- We use regular and robust triangulated monitoring to evaluate the impact of our curriculum design. Leaders at all levels review learning, talk with our children (through the use of Class Learning Forum or the school’s SPLAT team) and provide feedback to move practice forward.
- We ensure that our children’s attainment and progress are in line or exceeding their potential. We measure this using national data (where appropriate), our connected curriculum, and monitoring evidence.
- Through high quality teaching, we will have closed gaps for all learners, but especially those who are disadvantaged.
Using Schemas
In the past couple of years, we have developed the use of schemas, which help children understand the key knowledge, in history, geography, science and RE across Key Stages 1 and 2. These are an excellent way of helping children to know more and remember more. The children rehearse verbally the knowledge and explain what each of the icons/ pictures represent to their peers and teachers. Each lesson, children return to their prior knowledge and focus on the section of the schema they've already learnt, ready to move on to the next part of key knowledge.
Throughout the year, the children will return to previous topics, and see how much of the schema they remember. This is to allow the key knowledge to become part of their long term memory.
Our classroom displays are also modelling the schema and are used within the lesson. Each lesson adds new knowledge and vocabulary to the schema. Here are some examples of our working walls at the beginning of a topic.
