Respect, Aspire and Rejoice!
Our three core values: ‘respect’, ‘aspire’ and ‘rejoice’ underpin our curriculum and further act as our curriculum drivers. These have been deliberately chosen as verbs as we seek to ensure that our children demonstrate these during their time at St Mark’s.
Respect:
§We seek to develop the children’s respect for our increasingly diverse society through exploring different cultures, faiths and beliefs through out taught curriculum and in Collective Worship. Our curriculum for Religious Education and Worldviews uses units from both the ‘Emmanuel Project' and 'Understanding Christianity' schemes of work which are adapted to reflect the religious representation of our community (local and global). We seek to develop an appreciation of the diversity of the wider world in which we live.
§Our PSHE curriculum further embeds the importance of good morals and following in Jesus’ footsteps.
§We promote fundamental British values throughout our curriculum, Collective Worships, School Council discussions and our emphasis on Religious Education and moral, social, spiritual and cultural development.
Aspire:
§We aspire to achieve outcomes which allow for our children to make better than expected progress in all subject areas through removing barriers to learning and having consistently high expectations.
§As each subject area is taught discretely, children are taught to appreciate the distinctive uniqueness of individual subjects and aspire to become future scientists, computer coders, historians, etc.
§Children explore activists who have shaped our society and through this, we seek to encourage our children to strive to make a difference.
Rejoice:
§We place a high priority on ensuring the physical and mental wellbeing of children is met, understanding that they will only be successful learners if they are emotionally secure and regulated.
§Exciting, memorable learning experiences are carefully planned which include a focus on enquiry-based learning.
§We enhance and enrich the curriculum through a variety of activities: educational trips, for example, Hooke Court in Year 4 and Brenscombe in Year 6) and visitors, school performances, as well as extra-curricular lunchtime and after school clubs.
§We utilise our picturesque school grounds through a focus on outdoor learning.
§We endeavour to ensure that children see a relevance and a purpose to their learning, so plan for learning to build towards purposeful outcomes.
§We actively encourage children to rejoice in their successes and in the successes of others, whether academic, sporting, musical or in an area of individual focus.