Subject Leaders: Mrs Rachael Shone and Mrs June Grant

It is our aim at St Mark’s to develop children’s abilities to become competent, confident and effective communicators in English. We achieve this through the specific teaching of the key strands of:

• Reading

• Writing

• Speaking, listening and drama

• Spelling (including synthetic phonics)

• Handwriting

We aim to inspire children to read with deep understanding for both pleasure and the acquisition of knowledge; and to value our literary heritage. We strive to create a genuine love of language and enjoyment of the process of reading.

In the teaching of writing, children are encouraged to produce work of a high standard, taking care with grammar, spelling, punctuation and handwriting. The emphasis is on clear and relevant communication of ideas with a sense of audience and a control of language.

In order to encourage the use of whole texts in the teaching of literacy, we subscribe to the Power of Reading - an organisation providing cross-curricular resource materials for teaching good quality literature from Reception to Year 6.

Much of the children’s extended writing is done in the course of topic based work and may arise from a range of different curriculum subjects. Children are encouraged to draft, edit and re-draft longer pieces of written work.

Speaking and listening skills are developed in part through drama and role play. We encourage creativity, discussion, empathy with the ideas and opinions of others, positive listening and clarity of speech. These skills should begin to equip children for lifelong learning and effective functioning in a diverse and challenging modern world.

Each class has a daily English lesson with a strong emphasis on the further development of skills in the context of learning in other areas of the curriculum. Beyond the literacy lessons, there are daily reading sessions for individual, whole class, paired or group guided reading or spelling related activities.

Teaching of Phonics and Early Reading

Intent

We aim to develop the full potential of all our pupils to become confident, literate readers and writers.

In order to achieve this, we aim to establish consistent practice, progression and continuity in the teaching and learning of phonics with a focus on quality first teaching.

By the end of Key Stage 1, we aim for all children to understand the alphabetic code, master the skills of segmenting and blending and have a good understanding of how these skills are used when reading and spelling. We also aim for all children to be able to read and write the common exception words identified as appropriate for Key Stage 1 and use correct letter formation in line with the school’s handwriting font.

Implementation

To teach phonics in a structured and consistent way, we use Unlocking Letters and Sounds - a DfE accredited phonics programme. This scheme includes an agreed order for teaching phonics and common exception words for reading and writing development.

Consistency and fidelity to the scheme are achieved by all staff using the agreed phonics teaching programme, as well as the scheme’s display and assessment materials. Staff use the agreed vocabulary from the scheme’s glossary with children when teaching phonics. They model blending and segmenting skills, ensuring they accurately articulate the sounds represented by the letters .

Phonics is taught through discrete daily sessions. Outside the discrete daily phonics sessions, there are opportunities to develop the application of phonic skills, e.g. during classroom activities and guided/shared reading.

A meeting is arranged in the autumn term for parents of Reception aged children to explain the school’s approach to the teaching of phonics.

Nursery

Phase 1 phonics is taught in Nursery to embed listening skills, sound identification and an awareness of rhythm and rhyme. Emphasis is placed on developing speech and language skills. The teaching of Phase 1 continues into the Reception class for those children who need more support to develop their skills.

Reception and Key Stage 1

Phases 2-5 and some elements of Phase 6 are taught through the scheme from Reception to Year 2. Year 2 staff use additional materials external to the scheme to ensure all of Phase 6 is taught.

This approach enables children to:

• recognise, say and write all phonemes within each phase of Letters and Sounds (Phases 2-5);

• use their phonetic knowledge to blend and segment phonetically decodable words, including more complex words (e.g. compound words);

• apply and understand spelling patterns. (including suffixes and prefixes, at Phase 6);

• read and spell common exception words accurately;

• become confident readers who are able to use their skills to retrieve information and read for pleasure;

• become confident writers who are able to express their ideas clearly.

Discrete daily phonics teaching in Key Stage 1

Children in Reception, Key Stage 1 and lower Key Stage 2 (who are still in need of phonics development) participate in the daily phonics sessions. These sessions are organised into groups by the phonic phases the children are working within rather than by chronological age.

Teaching and support staff provide well-structured teaching which provides opportunities to:

• Revisit and Review – recap on previously taught sounds (phonemes), letters (graphemes) and common exception words.

• Teach – teach new sounds (phonemes), letters (graphemes) and common exception words.

• Practise – provide opportunities to practise saying, reading and writing sounds and words.

• Apply – apply the new skill to read and write words, captions and sentences.

SEND Support and Intervention

Through careful monitoring and tracking, teachers are able to identify children who are not making the expected progress and therefore need intervention to help close the gap and ensure progress is made. Depending on the needs of individuals, this may include additional one-to-one or small group tutoring, or extra support within a lesson.

It is vitally important that children who are struggling to learn to read make progress and catch up with their peers.

Where a phonetic approach is not deemed appropriate, school will consider alternative approaches to developing reading and writing e.g. a whole word approach.

Key Stage 2

If children in Key Stage 2 experience difficulty in reading and/or writing because they have missed or misunderstood a crucial phase of the systematic phonics teaching, additional support will be given. They may participate in the Key Stage 1 daily phonics groups or other intervention strategies and teaching tools (e.g. Toe by Toe or Word Wasps) may be considered and used to meet their specific reading development needs.

Tracking and assessment

Assessment procedures are robust. Children’s progress is recorded and assessed regularly by class teachers and all adults leading the discrete daily phonics groups. Groupings are fluid, enabling children to move from group to group so the teaching is appropriate and progression is provided for all learners.

Formative assessment occurs within lessons and assessment informs planning. Children in need of intervention are identified early to ensure their needs are met in a timely fashion.

Year 1 Phonics Screening Check

During the summer term, every Year 1 child will take the Government Phonics Screening Check. This is a phonics based check in which children will be expected to read 40 simple, decodable words, including nonsense words. This is a progress check to identify those children not at expected level in their reading. Results are sent to the local authority. Whether or not the child meets the expected level will be reported to parents in their annual school report. Children who fall below the expected level are invited to attend ‘Phonics Club’ to develop their knowledge and skills. Where appropriate, additional intervention may be put in place to facilitate catch-up.

Year 2 children who did not meet the required standard in Year 1 retake the Phonics Screening Test alongside Year 1 in the Summer term. Any child working below the level of the screen check may be dis-applied, with the acknowledgment of the parent/carer.

Impact

Through consistent, systematic daily teaching, children are expected to become fluent, confident readers and writers by the end of Key Stage 1.

Children will be equipped with the skills necessary to blend and segment letters, and the sounds they represent, for reading and spelling development. They will develop a good level of fluency and comprehension which will hopefully lead to a love of reading and allow them to explore and take pleasure in the rich literary world we live in with a firm phonetic basis to support them.

Supporting Learning at Home

Parents are encouraged to ensure their child is reading their reading books on a daily basis and regularly applying their phonics skills at home.

We recommend parents play common exception word games, phonic word games and sing nursery rhymes and songs to support the child’s reading development.

We recommend that parents read a range of books to the child to model good reading skills and develop a love of reading, including the ten core books identified for their class.

Parents are also encouraged to support their child by practising their spellings each week, using the correct letter formation for each letter.

Parents are welcome to contact their child's teacher for more information and ideas on how to support their child at home.

Subject Leaders: Mrs Laura Whittaker and Mrs June Grant

The Maths curriculum is delivered based on the Primary National Curriculum (2014) and the framework for the EYFS.

We aim to provide all pupils with some significant direct teaching every school day which is oral, interactive, fun and stimulating.

The variety of teaching styles and lesson/group structures used provide opportunities for pupils to make connections, becoming fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, being able to reason mathematically and to solve increasingly sophisticated problems.

All children have access to concrete apparatus and each year group has a number of key number facts to learn with the aim of developing instant mental recall. These then give a foundation of facility with number to support learning in maths as children move through the curriculum for each year group.

Children are encouraged to reflect on their own learning and apply maths knowledge and skills in a real life context, in other lessons and, where possible, beyond the confines of the traditional classroom.

We use materials and resources from the White Rose Maths hub throughout the school, from Reception to Year 6.

Subject Leader: Mrs Dorothy Thorne

Our science curriculum is based on the current EYFS Framework and the Primary National Curriculum (2014).

We aim to ensure continuity and progression from Reception to Year 6. We aim to develop the children’s scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding in biology, chemistry and physics.

We place a strong emphasis on working scientifically and use an enquiry based approach to ensure that children develop rigorous scientific skills while learning more about the world around them.

We teach about the lives and achievements of important scientists and aim to help the children understand the possible uses and applications of science today and in the future. Above all we endeavour to make learning science practical, exciting and fun!

Subject Leader: Mrs Justine Yarker

RE is an essential subject at the core of all learning in school in that it encourages children to consider what it means to be human. By building on the school-wide development of the spiritual elements of life, RE takes children on a journey into the ways in which people have sought to answer the big philosophical questions at the heart of our existence.

As a Church of England school our emphasis is on the teaching of Christianity as a reasonable faith with a balance of narrative, thematic and doctrinal elements. We look at two other world faiths in detail in order to make comparisons and develop deep understanding and appreciation of difference. Judaism and Islam, in teaching, heritage and as monotheistic religions, have much in common with Christianity and thematic teaching will often draw on all three.

Our current syllabus is based on schemes of work produced by the Blackburn Diocese. - “Questful RE”. We are beginning to introduce concepts and units of work from the new Church of England sponsored Understanding Christianity materials.

We take an enquiry-based approach to the teaching of RE, encouraging the children themselves to raise questions for discussion, with a balance between ‘learning from’ and ‘learning about’ religion.

In all teaching we seek to provide opportunity for open dialogue and pupil self-expression in response to the ideas, issues and challenges raised.

In the current climate of fear of extremism and a fragile geopolitical context we seek to provide open, honest and challenging RE built on a shared set of Christian values.

Subject Leader: Mrs Hazel Cook

Geography, like History, is an enquiry-based subject which is designed to inspire curiosity, awe and wonder. Geography offers children a chance to investigate the world around them and gain an understanding of the people with whom they share it.

Units of study allow children to:

• discover and explore patterns and processes;

• ask why things are as they are;

• consider how places have changed;

• consider how places might continue to change; and

• begin to understand their own roles and place in in the modern world as global citizens.

We believe strongly that learning in Geography should be real and relevant and as a result much of our teaching has a link to our local area. The children have the opportunity to enjoy learning outside, developing field work skills and learning through hands on experience. This learning is recorded in a variety of ways and may be supported through work in other areas of the curriculum.

The curriculum for Geography offers ample opportunity for progression with the scope of places studied extending from the local area to the wider region, the country in which they live and the wider world.

Subject Leader: Mrs Hazel Cook

In the teaching of History through an enquiry-based approach we aim to foster in children genuine curiosity and a long, lasting interest in the past.

We work to enable them to understand the details of significant events and to ask and research questions about how and why the world has changed over time. We try to develop inquiring minds that ask questions about different beliefs and cultures and the ways in which they have shaped the development of our country.

Through study of the past we hope that children will learn more about themselves as individuals and members of modern British society.

Subject Leader: Mrs Sarah Robinson

Children experience many opportunities to develop their understanding, knowledge, skill and appreciation of art, craft and design. They explore a variety of tools, media and techniques to create sculptures, drawings, paintings, collages, prints and textiles.

Children are encouraged to express their ideas and feelings using these skills and techniques, even in other areas of the curriculum. Over time they will have looked closely at, and responded to, the work of a large range of artists from many different cultures and backgrounds, past and present.

Each week there is a chosen piece of art that is displayed around the school and in the hall during collective worship. A short introduction to the artist and their work is given in the whole school assembly at the beginning of each week.

Subject Leader: Mrs Sarah Robinson

Work in Design Technology provides children with the opportunity to experience a range of natural and man-made materials. It develops a child’s physical manipulative, creative and critical skills.

At Key Stage 1 children are encouraged to design and make models using reclaimed materials, food and textiles. Projects include making pop up books, moving toys, model houses and real pizzas.

At Key Stage 2 greater emphasis is placed on design and the evaluation of a finished product.

Subject Leader: Miss Quita Davies

While we currently follow the Lancashire Scheme of Work for PE we are actively looking to replace the scheme with a more up to date resource which incorporates online elements for teaching discreet skills and opportunities to support planning and assessment.

PE develops children’s physical competence and confidence and their ability to use these to perform in a range of activities. It promotes skill, agility, physical development and an understanding of the ‘body in action’. Children are encouraged to be creative and competitive and to face different challenges as individuals as well as in groups and teams.

Children can learn endurance, perseverance and resilience in the structured context of games and sports. We help them to learn how to lose with grace and learn from failure and making mistakes.

PE helps to promote the habits of a healthy lifestyle. In PE lessons children also learn useful skills that have applications in other aspects of learning: planning, performing and evaluating actions and ideas and improve on quality and effectiveness.

We have carefully structured schemes of work for gymnastics and games development. Elements of dance are included in these units.

Swimming

All children in Years 4 and 5 have a series of structured swimming lessons at Kendal Leisure Centre. The emphasis is on personal survival skills, based on the development of good basic strokes. Our aim is that all children achieve the KS 2 expectations for swimming before they leave the school. For that reason, children from Year 6 who have not yet achieved the standard may join the younger classes for lessons.

Children in Year 5 have an opportunity in the summer term to experience open water swimming in Windermere, in a session that also teaches the basics of safety at the water margin.

Competitive swimming is also encouraged in the fielding of teams to represent the school in the annual Kendal Primary schools swimming gala.

Competitive Sports

We encourage a mixture of individual skills development and competition. Within the KCP family of local schools and as part of the School Games programme organised by Active Cumbria, we are able to access a wide range of sports festivals and competitions.

Teams from St Mark’s have competed in Cross Country, Sports Hall Athletics, Football, Orienteering, Dodgeball, Tag Rugby, Cricket, Netball, Hockey, Rounders, Lacrosse and Swimming competitions in recent years.

We have also entered teams of children with SEND in local Panathlon events.

We regularly acknowledge the achievements of individual children who take part in sports out of school time by re-awarding cups, medals and certificates in our weekly Celebration assembly.

We have recently been successful in maintaining the Sainsbury’s School Games Gold Award for a third year, which recognises our participation and support in all areas of sport and physical activity.

For the last two years we have encouraged children in each class to walk or run 100 miles in the school year, as part of a national scheme to encourage fitness and fight obesity.

Subject Leader: Mr Peter Barfoot

Intent

Music is vital to human experience. As an art form, it enables communication across time and cultures, providing children with a huge range of opportunities to grow, flourish and express themselves in a structured yet creative way. Children will be introduced to a wide range of musical styles, learning about the history of music, the historical and cultural context for the growth of different genres and having regular, structured opportunities to respond to songs and instrumental pieces.

Children sing, accompany and improvise sections of songs in each unit working towards some form of performance.

Music lessons also provide opportunities for children to work with others to learn, create and perform in groups, developing essential interpersonal and team working skills that have application beyond the curriculum.

Implementation

The core music curriculum is taught across the school, from Year 1 to Year 6, in weekly lessons using the Charanga Model Music Curriculum which is based on the non-statutory Model Music Curriculum.

Music in the Early Years is taught using the original Charanga music scheme which provides a good basis for work taught in the National Curriculum.

The Scheme is presented in six units for Years 1 to 6. Each unit has a musical focus and a broader cross-curricular theme. Each unit is built around a core song or piece of music that is explored and then learned and performed. The units build progressively over the year, each providing opportunities to develop skills and understanding in listening, understanding, composing, improvising and singing or instrumental performance. Teachers have flexibility across the units to focus on these to a lesser or greater degree in each lesson.

The updated version of the Charanga scheme includes more music theory, wider use of range of notations, baseline assessment quizzes, more opportunity for a range of music activities, arrangements for each song and the choice of four instrumental parts. This will be implemented across the both Key Stages from the summer term 2022.

Teachers are able to access a full range of tuned and un-tuned percussion instruments to support learning in music lessons. Most lessons are taught in classrooms, using the whiteboard as the focus point for online, interactive resources. The core screen in each unit presents dynamic, timed, graphic music notation and prompts for children to follow.

There is planned, progressive development of each of the following eight core musical elements:

pitch, rhythm, structure, dynamics, pulse, texture, tempo and timbre.

Each classroom has these elements displayed to enable easy reference during lessons and at any other time that music is played or discussed.

Impact

The early units in the Charanga Model Music Curriculum for each year group incorporate baseline quizzes for teachers to use to establish children’s knowledge and understanding.

Teachers are able to assess children’s responses, involvement, progress and ability through obervation in the context of weekly lessons. At the end of each year teachers will make a final summative assessment of each child’s attainment: either working towards, at expected level or at greater depth.

Regular opportunities are provided for performance either to members of staff, other classes or to the whole school. This provides a powerful incentive to children to prepare for their own element of the performance to the best of their ability.

Subject Leader: Mr Peter Barfoot

The overarching aim of the Computing curriculum is to transform children’s experience with IT from simply using computers to understanding how they work and learning how to write code and simple programs.

Our emphasis is on equipping young people with the skills and knowledge they will need for living in a modern and rapidly changing world. They need a wide set of skills to enable them to function in the digital world.

The computing curriculum aims to develop both skills and knowledge through three elements:

• computer science

• information technology

• digital literacy

These strands are developed discreetly as well as through learning in other subjects where ICT is used to enhance teaching and learning.

Children in Key Stage 1will have the opportunity to learn how to write and test simple programs. They will learn how computers work and how to program them to organise, manipulate and store digital content.

Children in Key Stage 2 will learn about computer networks (including the internet) and the services these networks are able to provide. Throughout their learning an emphasis is placed on the safe use of ICT equipping children with the knowledge they need to access the digital world confidently and safely.

We provide regular access to computers through the timetabled use of a portable bank of 16 laptops.

Subject Leader: Mrs Claire Burrow

Our aim is to provide all of our pupils with a positive experience of language learning. Learning another language enables pupils to become members of a multi-cultural society. By introducing and exposing pupils to vocabulary, songs, rhymes and aspects of another culture, we hope they will develop the ability to better understand and respect others and play a valuable part in our global society. We aim to inspire a love of language as part of their lifelong learning journey.

We teach French, using the Language Angels Scheme. Our progressive curriculum enables pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in French, sing songs, read stories, texts and poems, and understand and respond to French speakers, both orally and in writing.

French is taught from Reception to Year 6 with the curriculum being covered as follows:

• Reception: nursery rhymes, greetings, numbers 1 to 10 and colours

• Year 1: animals, shapes, ‘I can . . .’ statements

• Year 2: vegetables, musical instruments, ice creams

• Year 3: phonetics, animals (2), seasons, fruit, Little Red Riding Hood, ancient Britain

• Year 4: phonetics, fruit (2), vegetables (2), ancient Britain (2), presenting myself, the classroom, family

• Year 5: phonetics, core vocabulary, fruit (3), presenting myself (2), family, my home, clothes

• Year 6: phonetics, core vocabulary, presenting myself (3), pets, my home, dates, school

The National Curriculum for Languages (Key Stage 2, 2014) aims to ensure that all pupils:

• understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources;

• speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation;

• can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt; and

• discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

Pupils are taught to:

• listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding;

• explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words;

• engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help;

• speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures, develop accurate pronunciation and intonation;

• present ideas and information orally to audiences;

• read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing;

• appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language;

• broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary;

• write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clearly; and

• describe people, places, things and actions orally and in writing.

Subject Leader: Mrs Kirsten Hardy

Through the PSHE Education curriculum we aim to provide children the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to lead confident, healthy, independent lives and to become informed, active, responsible citizens.

We take a whole school approach to PSHE Education reflected in our promotion of good health throughout the school.

The school subscribes to the PSHE Association and uses the association’s model schemes of work for PSHE which, from September 2020, incorporate the new statutory programmes of study for Relationships Education in Key Stages 1 and 2.

Where relevant, our schemes of work include aspects of Sex and Relationships, Drug and Alcohol Education and Citizenship as identified within non-statutory and statutory government guidance.

We enhance our provision through visits from Coram Life Education and a programme of education known as Kidsafe. Online Safety is supported through subscription to National Online Safety which provides us with staff, governor and parent training opportunities, an App for parents that regularly updates them on matters relating to particular platform and topical issues, and lessons for sue in the primary classroom.

Children learn about the processes of a western parliamentary democracy with annual elections for House Captains and School Council representatives. The School Council meets to share issues from class council meetings and to consider ideas for development of aspects of the school environment and school life.

In most years we invite our local Member of Parliament to meet with the School Council to explain the importance of representation and how it works in the UK parliamentary system.

When possible we take the whole School Council to London in the Summer term to visit the Houses of Parliament and witness the structure and process of UK government.

Our emphasis on our 15 Christian values coupled with our open, inclusive ethos helps to ensure a balanced and tolerant approach to people from minority cultures. We welcome children of the Christian faith, other faiths and no faith into school as pupils with no discrimination. Racist, homophobic and gender related incidents, and use of pejorative language, are challenged and recorded. They are very rare in deed.