Subject Overviews

Curriculum Rationale 

At St Thomas More each subject is valued and taught distinctively to ensure children are given the opportunity to gain a wider  understanding of the discipline. 

Key themes are sequenced from EYFS to Year 6, in each subject, and  spiral throughout topics to ensure children are reviewing prior  learning as well as learning ‘new knowledge.’ These themes allow for  knowledge to be ‘chunked’ to avoid cognitive overload thus  ensuring new knowledge is retained (E.D. Hirsch Jr, 1998). 

Underpinning our philosophy for devising the curriculum in this way is the  work of Anderson (1970) who found  that children learn best through  developing a schema – a mental structure of ideas/words, a framework representing some aspect of the world.

Therefore, our themes act as the  catalyst for developing schemas which  children can refer to when needed. 

We are passionate about delivering a  rich, broad, diverse and purposeful curriculum for all children. Following this  model, ensures we are narrowing gaps  between all groups of children. 

The curriculum is our progression model  and knowledge, both substantive and  disciplinary, are planned, taught and  assessed explicitly. This ensures thoroughness in both the sequencing  and the teaching of the curriculum. 

The curriculum is knowledge structured as narrative over time.