St George's Cathedral Catholic Primary School

Welcome to our St. George’s Cathedral Catholic Primary School. At St George’s Cathedral Catholic Primary School, we teach a broad and balanced creative curriculum which is based around exciting cross-curricular projects and meaningful, stimulating tasks. Our aim is for all children to become confident, successful, life-long learners who achieve their full God-given potential.

At St. George’s Cathedral Catholic Primary School we firmly believe that effective assessment is what lies at the heart of good teaching and learning. Assessment is happening in every classroom, every lesson, every day at our school and it involves everyone! We are passionate in our belief that every child can succeed and make progress in their learning journey, and it is the assessment of where children are in this journey that allows teachers to decide where they need to go next and how best to get them there.

St. George’s Cathedral Catholic Primary School is committed to valuing all members of the school community and strives to ensure that the opportunities to succeed are equal for all.

As a primary school, we believe we have a key role in society in combating discrimination and promoting fairness, justice and equality through our teaching and in the role models we offer.

Prayer and worship are at the heart of our school. The children have many opportunities for worship including daily class worship, independent, child led worship which is planned and organised by pupils.

The school day begins and ends with morning and evening prayers. This is held in the classrooms with all classed based staff and pupils involved. It is a beautiful way of coming together at the start and end of the day. Staff and pupils lead this and often ask for special prayers to be said or people remembered. All children understand that they can ask for a personal intention and can compile and share their own prayers. Grace before meals is said in every class before lunch play.

Community cohesion is a core value and ethics and cultural diversity have always been a rich feature of St. George’s Cathedral Catholic Primary School. Other religions are taught at the school and diversity is celebrated through cultural assemblies.

We follow the RE scheme ‘Come and See’ and teachers endeavour to ensure that the Gospel values and the principles of the integrated into all aspects of the curriculum especially English, history, geography, science and PSHE and Citizenship.

Art enables children to explore and understand the world around them. Children’s love for art, from the past and other cultures, is fostered through visits to galleries and museums.

We consider drawing to be a key skill that needs to be taught. All units of work start by drawing from first-hand experience, this develops observational and perceptual skills. Through these experiences children develop an understanding of the elements of art and develop an art vocabulary to review and evaluate their work. As part of our art work we also study artists and the work of artists from different periods.

At St. George’s Cathedral Catholic Primary school we aim to teach children to love English, to read and write to a high standard and for pleasure. We also teach them to speak to a range of different audiences and to listen well and with skill.

We aim to encourage children to feel passionate about reading and writing, and to inspire personal interest and curiosity about a range of literacy activities as well as working towards all children achieving National Standards in English.

The curriculum includes reading, writing, spelling, handwriting, grammar, speaking and listening and drama. Each unit of work taught lasts from 2 to 4 weeks and helps the children to develop specific skills.

Throughout their time at St. George’s Cathedral, children will cover a large range of fiction genres as well as reading and writing different non-fiction text types.

As a school we use Oxford Reading Tree as our reading scheme. In teaching phonics throughout the school we use Letters and Sounds.

In order to support writing across the curriculum, children visit museums and other places of interest for history and geography, they watch plays by visiting theatre groups, work with authors and participate in writing and drama workshops. All of these experiences are used to help inspire and extend writing.

At St. George’s Cathedral we use a scheme called ‘Rising Stars’ which provides a basis for development. We also use professional support from Andrew Goodgame at Wandsworth CLC who works alongside teachers on how to use iPads to develop teaching and learning.

The safe use of the internet is also a focus in our school with children being taught about the benefits and possible dangers of the internet use. We have also had several successful sessions for parents on cyber-bullying and internet safety delivered by Andrew Goodgame.