Curriculum

At St John's we aim to present the curriculum through an interesting and challenging programme of work, which builds on the children’s interests and experiences. We build children’s confidence and try to encourage our pupils to develop cooperation, self-discipline and perseverance. Our children are given the chance to develop and use these skills throughout the curriculum, through first-hand experiences and practical activities. We actively teach the children how to be good learners.

Through a variety of teaching methods and strategies, we aim to instil children with an enthusiasm for learning and prepare them for future school life. Teaching methods, including whole class, group and paired work, or individual personalised programmes of study are chosen, as appropriate, to meet the task or skill being focused upon.

During the course of the year, the children will encounter a range of teaching methods. They will mainly be taught by their own class teacher, although we do have specialist teachers in some areas, enabling us to best use the individual expertise of talented staff.

Our curriculum strives to ensure breadth, balance and depth. We know that children learn faster and more effectively when skills and concepts are linked between subjects at the same time. We now plan themes or topics carefully so that continuity and progression are smooth and aid development. Topics enable us to identify skills, concepts, knowledge and ideas from individual subjects and bring them together in a cohesive way. Some areas of study are taught discretely, especially where strong links cannot be made, to ensure complete curriculum coverage.

   Our drive, as a school, is to identify, support and challenge children at all stages of their learning to maximise their individual potentials. Children in Our school come from a wide range of backgrounds so we feel it is important to build enrichment activities and trips into our curriculum to enhance their life experiences.

 Our children learn the value of being unique persons who have responsibility to our local and national communities. The journey is to discover the real essence of who God created us to be, by connecting with the Holy Spirit that is within each of us. Our Curriculum is developed around this principle. Christ is alive. We use our SMSC and virtues to represent this in our learning. 

The spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of our pupils and their understanding of the core values of our society are woven through our new curriculum. Our Curriculum is created to develop deep learning through  retention of sticky knowledge and greater exposure to vocabulary and Oracy. This links to all curriculum subjects and with the maths mastery approach to teaching mathematics. This now allows children time to use their skills and apply them both within the subject and across other subjects.