At St John's we believe that our curriuclum should be creative, inspiring and challenging in order that children develop a love of learning and develop the confidence and skills to prepare them for life beyond St John's.
Our Curriculum intent statement sets out the rationale for what we teach our children. It is shaped to meet the priorities and opportunities most relevent to our school and includes strands on diversity and inclusion, physical and mental wellbeing, parental engagement, oracy and our school values. Our teaching and learning policy outlines how we help our children to learn effectively - you can see a copy by clicking here.
In the Early Years we use Birth to 5 Matters as our developmental framework. We plan from a range of high-quality diverse texts which are grouped to cover broad themes. These themes are supported by our CLPE core texts and rotate on a two-year basis so that children cover each theme once during their time in the Nursery and Reception classes. Each academic year begins with a theme based around staff getting to know the children and the children learning to use the classrooms effectively and independently.
Within the Nursery and Reception classrooms, children engage in a range of adult led and child-initiated learning. Adult led learning involves the adult having a clear learning objective that they would like the children to meet. The adult will have thought about how they are going to facilitate this, the resources they may need and how they will support or extend the learning. During child initiated learning a sensitive adult may join the play and encourage a deeper level of thinking (sustained shared thinking) whilst still ensuring that the learning is led by the child.
Our Early Years themes are:
You can click on each topic below to find out more about what is covered in each one. You can also look at the weekly powerpoints on the Nursery and Reception class pages for some of their learning highlights.
Nursery curriculum maps
Ourselves
Colour and Light
Food
Travel and Transport
Once upon a time
Growth
Water
Reception curriculum maps
Ourselves
Colour and Light
Food
Travel and Transport
Once upon a time
Growth
Water
Our key stage 1 and 2 curriculum map shows what is taught across the curriculum in each year group. We have thought carefully about how we include a wide range of inspirational and diverse role models throughout the curriculum and these can be seen highlighted on the curriculum map.
Although we follow the national curriculum, at St John's we strive for deeper learning through the use of 'Big Questions' to explore a particular area in more detail. We always try to plan series of lessons that are engaging and inspiring, making the most of trips and special visitors to bring learning to life. Each term, classes also use P4C (Philosophy for Children) to develop questioning and thinking skills. Each term, we have a whole school curriculum focus to enable teachers and students to learn together- these have included projects such as science week, writing week, maths week and enterprise week.
Daily literacy and numeracy lessons ensure that children have all the core skills they need to access the curriculum fully and be independent learners.
We place great emphasis on children being confident and enthusiastic readers. To see our intent for reading, as well as how we implement reading lessons and the impact of this, just click here.
We have recently introduced 'Little Wandle' which is a comprehensive approach to the teaching of phonics and early reading. Children learn early phonics skills as soon as they start with us in early Years and the structured phonics programme with linked decodable books ensures they make strong progress. Parents can access the Little Wandle website for guidance and support with phonics and reading, ensuring the approach you take at home is the same as our approach in school. We also want children to enjoy a wide range of high quality texts as a means of helping to develop their language and imagination, as well as supporting learning across the curriculum. Children take home a 'real book' to share with their adult at home each week and regularly use our local library as well as the school library. Our literacy lessons are based on CLPE units (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) and use high quality core texts to develop children's language, imagination and writing skills. You can see our English curriculum map for each year group by clicking here. You can also see our intent statement for writing by clicking here.
Daily maths lessons take place for all classes to help them develop core skills and knowledge. We also provide opportunities for children to apply their skills and understanding through regular problem solving and investigations. Our school follows the 'maths mastery' approach and uses core resources from White Rose to support planning, teaching and assessment. Children are helped to learn their number facts, including times tables, in line with the new national curriculum expectations and are tested on these regularly for quick recall. We use several online resources to support children's maths learning including Doodle maths and TT Rockstars - pupils have log in details so that they can also access these at home.
You can see an outline of what areas of maths are covered in each year group by clicking here.
You can also see a more detailed breakdown of the progression in maths skills by clicking here to see our whole school maths skills document.
Our topics are cross curricular and have a wide range of trips planned to inspire the children's learning. Our class pages (on the Year Groups tab) will give you an insight into the sort of wonderful things are children are learning. They also provide details of the curriculum map for each class and some useful links to websites that will support the children's learning.
You can see the curriculum maps and knowledge/skills progression documents for each subject by clicking below
Science curriculum map
Science knowledge and skills progression
Religious education curriculum map
RE knowledge and skills progression
History curriculum map
History knowledge and skills progression
Geography curriculum map
Geography knowledge and skills progression
Computing curriculum map
PSHE curriculum map
PE curriculum map
PE Progression of Skills
Art curriculum map
DT curriculum map
Spanish Curriculum map
Spanish knowledge and skills progression
Music curriculum map
Music knowledge and skills progression
Assessment is an essential part of teaching and learning and helps us to understand what each child has fully understood and what their next steps are. You can find out more in our assessment policy.
Weekly homework helps children to reinforce much of the learning that has taken place during the week in school and is an opportunity for parents to work with their children and support them with their learning. Click here to see our homework policy.
We also recognise the importance of a wider curriculum that helps support the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of each child. You can click here to see the many ways we do this at St John's.
Home learning
You can see our remote learning policy by clicking here. We have also published a document for parents that sets out our school's home learning offer. If you have any questions or difficulties accessing any of the home learning, please contact the school office or your child's class teacher.