Personal Development

Personal Development here at St Mary’s

At St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, we endeavor to enable every child to become confident, resilient individuals with a good understanding of diversity and how to positively contribute to the society in which they live. We strive to enable our pupils to take part in a wide range of cultural experiences during their time in our school including those that would fall outside of their typical experiences.

In order to achieve this, we offer a range of clubs before school, after school and during lunchtimes as well as a full programme of educational visits to enrich the school’s curriculum offer. These opportunities cover a range of essential life skills and cultural experiences that develop confidence, friendships and embed an understanding of positive mental health. Pupils have the opportunity to contribute to the life of the school by serving on pupils bodies, to engage with members of the community both in the local area and the national and global communities and develop their understanding of being good citizens. Our whole school curriculum is designed to provide our pupils with opportunities to learn through contexts relevant to their own experiences and to provide windows into learning and culture from around the world.

Through our RSE & RE curriculum, Picture News, school assemblies, daily acts of collective worship, whole school initiatives and our approach to managing behaviour, our children are given the opportunity to develop their own characteristics and understand the values and differences of those around them. Our pupils are taught explicitly about fundamental British Values and how they are applicable to their own personal context.

The curriculum Intent here at St Mary’s states:

‘We pride ourselves on implementing a broad and balanced curriculum teaching the full range of the National Curriculum Programmes of study with an appropriate amount of curriculum time committed to teaching each subject and all subjects taught to a high standard. Our curriculum is designed to reflect the Catholic Character of our school, our school context and the locality of Grimsby, with the children having multiple opportunities to learn about and to learn within our local area. Within our curriculum we plan specific opportunities to develop pupils’ knowledge and experiences beyond the National Curriculum in order to develop their cultural knowledge and character. Our curriculum is an entitlement for all pupils regardless of their starting point, teachers endeavour to ensure that all pupils can access the full curriculum at St Mary’s.’

Impact on Teaching and Learning and Standards:

Children have a greater knowledge and understanding of the place of Grimsby within History and Geography. They are able to articulate their prior learning and new knowledge learned. They are able to explain and make links to prior learning.  Visits at the beginning a topic is a springboard to future learning and children are able to retrieve key knowledge.

Children have recalled this learning much later in the same year and in the following year and this is helping with spaced retrieval.

These visits and experiences have engaged the children and have helped the children to understand what it is to be a historian / geographer / scientist / artist etc.  The children have been using the key vocabulary learned and using it in their reading, writing and spoken language, and in their questioning and explanations. Our children are now understanding that Grimsby and their local area is a place to be proud of but also we are enabling them to learn there is wider world out there that they can succeed in.

Please click on the link Latest News Link for previous sports competitions and trips attended by children from St Marys

Boccia Team

Well done to our Boccia team who attended the develop event and came third place. They had the biggest smiles so I think it was a winner all round.

Year 5 and 6 Athletics

Some photos from the recent Years 5 and 6 athletics festival. Well done to all that took part.

Year 2 exciting trip to Hull Street Museum. What a fantastic way to to learn about history.