Understanding our children, their strengths and their next steps is at the heart of all decisions taken regarding the curriculum. We chose to write our own curriculum for the children in order for them to flourish. 

We focus on oracy as the core of our work. This directly supports all children but especially those with special needs, who are in receipt of pupil premium or who speak English as an additional language.  Learning is strengthened with the use of symbols and visual prompts. We aim high and all learning is organised with Bloom’s Taxonomy as the thread which runs through it, enabling children to think about, discuss and learn from higher order concepts. Staff training and development  play an important role with staff at STC having access to high quality opportunities such as Talk for Writing. We carefully plan our enrichment activities linking them directly to learning. These, again, are chosen by our staff and are tailored to each curriculum plan. An example is below.

At St Thomas we follow the Herefordshire Agreed Syllabus and as part of that Understanding Christianity. Staff training is secure thanks to the support of the Diocesan team. Using INSET time to enable real discussion and time for making learning work for our children is invaluable in developing their learning in Religious Education.

Learning in terms of Rights Respecting Schools, Eco Schools and our work with ENCORE (Herefordshire’s music service) as well as NMITE (Herefordshire’s University) and Stride Active(Herefordshire Sports) develop children’s broader learning and help to both find and nurture talent. When coupled with the school’s work using JIGSAW (PSHE) links with the police, local business and charities children at St Thomas are learning how to live in their world – how to be responsible, emotionally intelligent, eco aware and resilient – able to let their lights shine for themselves and others.