Art & Design

At St. Mary’s, we want our children to develop their creativity in everything they do. Our Art and Design curriculum aim to inspire and challenge both our children and our staff to develop their critical and reflective thinking and encourage confidence to take risks with their learning (related to drawing, painting, sculpture, collage, collaborative art). We foster the belief that ‘making mistakes is part of the learning process’ and that, when in our safe classroom environment, helps us to improve our skills and abilities, not only Art and Design, but in all areas of our lives. Our children complete their learning journey with us as imaginative individuals who have a positive attitude towards their creative abilities.

Design Technology

At St. Mary’s, we want our children to have opportunities to use their creativity and imagination - to design, make and evaluate their own products that suit a target audience in real life situations. Children work both independently and collaboratively, learning to value the contribution of others to a group project. We aim for our children to understand that making mistakes is part of the design process and an integral part of evaluating and improving a product. Our Design and Technology curriculum encourages children to develop their critical and reflective thinking skills throughout the design process, related to cooking and nutrition, mechanisms, electrical systems and more. Our children complete their learning journey with us as reflective and innovative individuals who are able to problem-solve with confidence to develop solutions to real life situations.

Music

Music provision at St Mary's first and foremost aims to help our children feel that they are musical, and to develop a life-long love of music. We focus on developing the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need in order to become confident performers, composers and listeners. Our curriculum introduces music from all around the world and across generations, teaching children to respect and appreciate diversity.

Children develop their musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music. We advocate courage through the opportunity to share and celebrate talents in whole-school events, as well as work with our peripatetic Music specialist.

Modern Foreign Language

At St. Mary’s, we believe that learning a modern foreign language provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for our pupils. Learning a modern foreign language raises awareness or our multilingual and multicultural world and fosters respect of our global community.  The modern foreign language taught at St. Mary’s is French, reflecting our unique geographical location and proximity to France.

French is taught throughout Key Stage 2, with the foundations for this being established in Year 1 and 2 by learning French songs/rhymes and basic vocabulary (for example numbers to 10 and colours). We teach this in a variety of ways using songs/rhymes, games and role play - developing children's listening, speaking and writing skills.