Our Curriculum
We believe in a creative and enquiry based curriculum for the children who come to St Matthew’s Primary School. We want children to be independent learners who value knowledge and strive to fulfil their potential.
Check out each class page to find out what we are doing in our curriculum areas each term.
You can see our class overviews for the whole year if you click on the links below.
Reading
At St Matthew’s we place a high priority on reading for meaning. Alongside decoding, the children are taught comprehension skills to help them access the rich world that is created by reading. In KS1 we use Letters and Sounds to help the children with phonics as well as the mnemonics from the Jolly Phonics scheme. The books children take home are from a range of sources such as Oxford Reading Tree, Collins Big Cat, Discovery Heinemann, Booklife and classic texts.
Writing
Creativity is encouraged in all aspects of our writing. Children learn to write for a variety of different purposes and audiences. We follow a Phased Planning sequence for writing designed to build up imagination alongside technical aspects.
Maths
There is a great emphasis on reasoning and problem solving at St Matthews. Each class regularly undertakes maths investigations and problems solving is used as often as possible in our lessons. Children are taught different strategies for problem solving.
Progression - Addition and Subtraction
Progression - Multiplication and Division
RE
As a church school we put a high priority on the teaching of RE. Each year the children will study topics linked to Christianity and another of the main religions during dedicated RE weeks. The religions studied are: Judaism (Year 1 and 2), Hinduism (Year 3 and 4) and Islam (Year 5 and 6).
PE
We have a very varied curriculum for PE. The children have two PE lessons a week run by their class teacher. We also make full use of our swimming pool in summer and all the children go swimming each week.