At St Margaret’s‑at‑Cliffe Primary School, our curriculum is designed to help every child feel curious, confident, and excited about learning. We want our children to “learn more and know more” as they move through the school, building strong foundations for their future lives.
Our curriculum is:
- Broad and ambitious
- Rooted in high‑quality texts
- Carefully sequenced from EYFS to Year 6
- Designed to develop the whole child
- Enriched with trips, visitors, and real‑life experiences
We follow the National Curriculum 2014, and we use the Cornerstones Maestro Curriculum to design and deliver engaging, knowledge‑rich projects. These projects bring learning to life through a four‑stage approach:
- Engage – capturing children’s interest with memorable experiences
- Develop – building knowledge and skills in depth
- Innovate – applying learning creatively
- Express – reflecting on and celebrating achievements
Our curriculum is underpinned by our core values of Resilience, Resourcefulness, Respect and Tolerance, Responsibility, and Reflection, which help our children grow as learners and as people.
We want every child to leave St Margaret’s‑at‑Cliffe Primary School as a confident, motivated learner who is ready for the next stage of their education — and ready to take their place in the world.
Phonics
We follow an integrated phonics and reading programme: Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised.
The programme has been organised so that children are taught letters and sounds progressively and systematically. Children learn how to say phonic sounds, how to blend sounds to read words and to read sounds in words and books. Children learn to read as quickly as possible so that they can move from learning to read, to reading to learn, giving them access to the treasure house of reading.
Reading Scheme
Reading is the door to creativity, to visualisation and to greater knowledge; it is the gateway to fantastic, impossible realms, planets and worlds. Research tells us that children who read for pleasure on a daily basis develop a wider vocabulary, greater general knowledge and a far better understanding of other cultures. It is perhaps one of the single most important factors in a child’s development. Naturally, we therefore believe that it is every child’s right to learn to read, but we hope that our children go far beyond this to develop a true love and pleasure for reading.
Our teaching team are enthusiastic reading roles models who demonstrate and encourage a love for reading, children have access to a wide variety of reading materials through class reading areas, and the carefully selected model texts used in the teaching of English. Children have books read to them daily in classes as well as a weekly whole school story assembly. We share a dedicated reading for pleasure time every day, and encourage reading a wide range of different genres.