School Hours:

Infants: 8:40 - 15:15 (32 hours 55 minutes a week)

Juniors: 8:40 - 15:20 (33 hours 20 minutes a week)

Our Christ Church Curriculum has been designed and developed to enable our children to become:

• Knowledgeable & Curious
• Respectful & Thoughtful
• Independent & Fulfilled

At the very heart of our school is the vision to help and nurture every member of the Christ Church family to be the very best they can be. We have a caring and dedicated staff team who aim to provide the very best opportunities for our children, our school family and our community. Our curriculum is designed to be aspirational and inclusive for all and not only includes the National Curriculum but also the range of extra opportunities and activities the school organises in order to enrich the knowledge and learning experiences for our children. Our curriculum is outward facing and celebrates diversity utilising the skills, knowledge and cultural wealth of our community while supporting the children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, ensuring that children are well prepared for life in modern Britain. Christian distinctiveness and Christian values infuse our teaching and learning. 

Our Curriculum Design,Intent and Implementation

At Christ Church, we have designed and created a rich, broad, ambitious and inspiring three-dimensional curriculum that is guided by our vision, aims and values.  At its very heart, our curriculum is planned and developed to help open a doorway to the world for all of our children. We aim to nurture and support our children so that they become knowledgeable, curious and respectful citizens, ready to make a difference and ready for the challenges of the 21^st century. Indeed, we place great importance on developing eloquent, independent, reflective learners who grow to be happy, compassionate and  healthy adults.  Furthermore, as a school family, we aim to help children respect and celebrate diversity, embrace individuality and understand our rich cultural inheritance in order to prepare them for their future and life in modern Britain. 

The Christ Church curriculum has been built and influenced using educational research so that it promotes long term learning and knowledge for life.  Each subject discipline has its own curriculum vision and is coherently planned, sequenced and delivered to ensure subject integrity and progression, in the aim that children know more, remember more and are able to do more with their knowledge as they progress through the school. 

We deliver the  National Curriculum  which covers the core subjects of English, Mathematics and Science together with the foundation subjects of Art and Design, Computing, Design Technology, Geography, History, Music, Physical Education, Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) and Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE). The curriculum is successfully adapted, designed and developed for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

As a school, we deliver our curriculum so that all children are provided with opportunities to apply their knowledge and develop their skills in context and immerse themselves in rich subject content or real world problems. Through a stimulating learning environment, broad and balanced experiences and challenging project questions, we strive to promote positive attitudes to learning and to enable all children to learn and develop their knowledge, skills and understanding to the fullest in order to develop their understanding of the world they live in on a local, national and global scale.

Across all subject areas, our children are given rich opportunities to talk, think deeply, ask questions, debate moral and social issues and showcase high quality work in front of an authentic audience.  As a school, our curriculum has been developed to ensure that the opportunities within each subject discipline are maximised as well as helping our children to acquire knowledge and expertise in the basics of reading, writing, speaking and mathematics.  A rich variety of methods are used to deliver our curriculum and the children’s learning journeys so that gaps in learning are not present and succinct steps are built, including: mastery lessons, enquiry led projects with key questions at their heart, physical activity and sporting competitions, creative and cultural experiences as well as opportunities to speak publicly and perform.  Pupils are given multiple opportunities for deliberate practice, including using use low stakes quizzing to revisit key knowledge and information that we know is vital for children to master.The curriculum is adapted to meet the needs of all children. 

Depth of learning is important - we do not narrow our curriculum - we ensure children receive a broad and balanced curriculum and ensure learning is relevant, exciting, aspirational and challenging. All  subjects are viewed as being equally important; but underpinned by the understanding that basic literacy and numeracy competency is vital in all learning. As a school, we promote a love of reading.

We measure the impact of our curriculum in a variety of ways:

• Reflecting on the standards achieved against planned outcomes
• Celebrating the learning at the end of each topic, where children demonstrate the knowledge they have gained
• Sampling children's learning across the school, including book looks
• Pupil discussions with teachers and Senior Leaders about their learning
• Tracking of standards across the curriculum
• A successful curriculum needs to be remembered by pupils, and the importance of memory and retention is an everyday part of our approach to the curriculum.  We place an emphasis on the regular questioning and quizzing of students to support the transfer core knowledge to their long-term memory.  We develop resources such as knowledge organisers that outline this information clearly and enable teachers, parents and students to use them regularly for low-stakes quizzing.

Children leave Christ Church with a secure understanding of the academic content taught; with the understanding of how to be socially and morally responsible and aware; and  to endeavour to be the best that they can be. We aim to nurture and support our children so that they ready to make a difference and  for the challenges of the 21^st century.

For further information, please contact the school office - admin@christchurch-chelt.gloucs.sch.uk