Our Curriculum
Curriculum Overview
At St. Nicholas, we have designed, created and implemented our own bespoke curriculum for our students so that they are adequately prepared with sufficient skills and knowledge for their future life. We ensure that the curriculum takes in to account our aims, design principles, learner values and attitudes and competencies and these are the key drivers for our learning experiences in school. You can find out more about each of these below.
Curriculum Aims
Every St Nick’s learner should have the qualities to:
- live a happy, healthy and independent life
- learn and achieve in school and throughout life
- make a positive contribution to school and to the community
Curriculum Design Principles
- Inspiring, exciting, diverse and active learning experiences
- Flexible, learner-centred curriculum that addresses learners’ needs, interests and abilities and challenges them to do better
- A holistic curriculum that routinely develops learners’ knowledge and understanding, skills, competencies, attitudes and values
- Relevant learning within the context of learners’ experience, community, culture and heritage
- Learning has clear outcomes / products, understood by learners
- Qualifications and achievements aligned with the needs of students
- Assessment must reinforce the importance of all aspects of learning
Competencies
- Inspiring, exciting, diverse and active learning experiences
- Flexible, learner-centred curriculum that addresses learners’ needs, interests and abilities and challenges them to do better
- A holistic curriculum that routinely develops learners’ knowledge and understanding, skills, competencies, attitudes and values
- Relevant learning within the context of learners’ experience, community, culture and heritage
- Learning has clear outcomes / products, understood by learners
- Qualifications and achievements aligned with the needs of students
- Assessment must reinforce the importance of all aspects of learning
Learner Values and Attitudes
The learners’ values and attitudes that we want to develop throughout our curriculum:
Values
Respect for others and the environment
Aspiration and achievement
Health and happiness
Lifelong learning
Attitudes
Caring and polite
Protective of the environment
Motivated to learn
Perseverance and resilience
Confidence and independence
Risk-taking / Learning from mistakes
Join us on our quest!
In order to deliver all of the above, we have designed our own 5 year rolling programme of half termly, cross-curricular projects, known as ‘quests’. Students have to complete a series of ‘steps’ (objectives) as they work through the learning sequence planned. Each quest has an end product for the students to work towards e.g. Autumn 1’s ‘Beside the Seaside’ product was the creation of a promotional leaflet about Southend-on-Sea. The development of key skills is taught through the quest so that it has relevance and purpose to our students e.g. the maths element of ‘Beside the Seaside’ was focused on measurement, including perimeter and area and students had to calculate what the area of a beach hut would be and what furniture could fit inside.
Each quest includes a range of enrichment activities such as trips or visits as experiential learning is key to supporting our students’ capacity to retain and recall learning. To see more detail about what each Quest focusses on click the ‘Quests Overview’ button below.
Each subject has mapped out the coverage and progression of skills and this looks different for each subject, depending on how it is delivered within the quest framework.
Accreditation Opportunities
In Key Stage 4 students are given the opportunity to work towards a variety of awards and accreditations. These will be discussed with students, parents and carers at parents evenings and will be chosen dependent on needs, ability and interests.
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Maths |
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English |
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Science |
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Computing and ICT |
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Art |
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PE |
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Cooking |
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Life Skills |
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DIY Skills |
For more detail about our curriculum, please see these pages too.