Primary

Art and Design education in KS1 and KS2 fosters creativity, self-expression, and critical thinking through hands-on exploration of a variety of materials and techniques. It provides young learners with opportunities to develop fine motor skills, visual-spatial awareness, and problem-solving abilities, while encouraging individuality and teamwork.

Students are introduced to key concepts, techniques, and art history. Projects are designed to build on foundational skills while fostering a deeper understanding of artistic processes. Students are encouraged to experiment, reflect, and critique their own and others’ work. Key areas of focus include:

• Exploring various media, such as pencil, charcoal, paint, clay, and textiles.
• Learning about artistic elements like line, form, color, texture, and composition.
• Studying the work of diverse artists, past and present, to inspire creativity.
• Developing the ability to plan, create, and refine their work.
• Building an appreciation for cultural and historical contexts of art.

Art and design in Primary aims to nurture well-rounded individuals, equipping them with skills and confidence that extend beyond the classroom and into all aspects of life.

The Primary Computing Curriculum focuses on enhancing students’ digital literacy skills through the use of various devices. It introduces them to the basics of programming and logical thinking, setting the stage for more in-depth exploration in Secondary School Computer Science. The curriculum aims to cultivate proficient technology users while laying the groundwork for a deeper understanding of computer science principles and fostering innovation in the future.

The primary music curriculum is designed to immerse students in a wide range of musical genres, instruments, and activities. The academic year is organized into themed topics that evolve as students progress through the Key Stages.

For our youngest learners, the focus is on developing an appreciation for music through active listening games, discussions, and body percussion, alongside hands-on demonstrations of orchestral instruments by teacher and older, more accomplished musicians. In Year 3, students begin their own musical journeys, starting with ukuleles and recorders before expanding to string, brass, and woodwind instruments. By Year 6, every student is able to play a musical instrument as part of the group and solo.

Performance opportunities are a key part of the program, including annual Christmas productions, regular concerts, and hymn-playing during mass, which allow students to showcase their musical growth. Older primary school students also have multiple opportunities to shine at external events, such as the NCFA, the Heroes Square tree lighting, and other island-wide occasions.

The key aims of the Physical Education Curriculum at St Ignatius Catholic School are:

• To promote high standards of physical fitness, health and well-being by ensuring all students have access to a broad, balanced and challenging curriculum.
• To develop students’ skills, techniques, tactics, knowledge and understanding in and across a range of sports and physical activities.
• To challenge students to develop character, resilience, determination, teamwork and leadership skills through a progressive curriculum that provides high levels of challenge and support
• To provide access to a wide range of extracurricular activities to further develop skills, tactics, knowledge and understanding and encouraging lifelong participation in physical activity and sport, enabling the widest access of opportunity.

The structure of the curriculum is linked closely with the extracurricular island-wide programme. Activities are timed to run in line with inter-school leagues and competitions. This gives students opportunities to develop skills at a higher level and in a more competitive environment, improving both physical fitness and technical and tactical ability in that sport, as well as developing characteristics such as resilience, determination and courage.

The curriculum at KS1 and 2 is designed to build skills and knowledge progressively across a range of physical activities. Developing students’ physical health and skill related fitness as a baseline for all sports is an important consideration- and the focus in Key Stage 1 is based on developing and refining fundamental motor skills.

Activities that students undertake across Primary Physical Education are:

• Gymnastics
• Track and Field
• Swimming
• Football
• Cricket
• Squash
• Tag/ touch Rugby
• Basketball
• Netball
• Softball/ Rounders

Each student has 2 lessons of core Physical Education per week.

Curriculum Intent

Learning a foreign language provides a window to the world. Our aim for the Spanish curriculum at St Ignatius is to provide an opportunity for students to express themselves and to have an appreciation of other cultures and the value of languages. We use many cultural resources, such as the use of songs, music, films and celebrating festivals, to contextualise the language for students by giving them an insight into the cultures and traditions where the languages are used. Considering the geography of Cayman, we are very keen that our students appreciate the benefits of speaking another language with our near neighbours. Our aim is for our pupils to love languages, and to spark an enthusiasm which turns them into life-long language learners.

In our lessons, phonics and sounds play a vital role as learners grasp the distinct rhythms and intonations that set Spanish apart from other languages. Consistent revision of vocabulary is essential, and various activities such as repetition, singing, roleplay and engaging in questions and answers help reinforce language acquisition. We also use sentence frames to model and over-practise language, developing students’ automaticity and putting vocabulary into context.

Throughout the primary school we give pupils short ‘language experiences’ where they have the opportunity to learn some French, German and Italian over a few weeks and to get a taster of how those languages sound. This is in order to develop our pupils as linguists, and to build transferable language learning skills by comparing and contrasting difference languages.

Early Years

In Early Years we have two 25 minute lessons per week, and we focus on phonics through songs, cultural exploration and love of learning. Our pupils study ways to introduce themselves, numbers, celebrations like Pirates Week and Christmas, different foods in Spain and Latin America, hobbies and sports, families and pets, timed to match the Early Years curriculum. We practise Flamenco and Salsa dancing and we investigate people’s lives and beautiful places in Spain and Latin America.

Key Stage 1

In Key Stage 1, pupils have one 50 minute lesson of Spanish per week, and learn to connect spoken and written Spanish. We study a range of topics from school, animals, food, my city, hobbies and more to match the Key Stage 1 curriculum. Pupils begin to use longer phrases, to give opinions, to use adjectives and connectives to develop and extend their communication. We match our topics with cultural study to give insight into Spanish-speaking peoples and places.

Key Stage 2

In Key Stage 2 our pupils begin to follow an intensive language curriculum structured through the use of sentence frames and following topics which provide towards KS3 and KS4. Pupils will learn to express themselves confidently on a range of topics, including Myself, My School, City, Weather, My Family and My Routine, and will learn to say and write extended passages in Spanish.