St John's Curriculum
The Curriculum at St John's begins the moment children step through the doors. It is not simply the subjects that the children get taught but every experience of their day, their interactions with adults and peers, their play and all the moments in between.
Our curriculum champions our pupils by being ambitious, relevant and engaging, allowing pupils to secure important knowledge and build upon previous learning. We are currently on a curriculum development journey creating a bespoke curriculum for the pupils of St John's which will challenge them and expose them to the cultural capital we want them to gain.
Our curriculum is planned through a comprehensive series of frameworks, long and medium term planning with clear intent of the knowledge we want the children to gain and ambitious endpoints for the end of each stage. We also recognise that whilst knowledge is important, children live by values and beliefs so personal development is a pivotal part of our curriculum offer.
In partnership with our whole school community, we have identified 5 core drivers which we aim to achieve through the delivery of our curriculum. We believe that if the children develop their understanding and ability to apply these drivers to their own lives, then our curriculum will have made a difference.
St john's curriculum drivers:
We aim for our curriculum to ensure all pupils:-
- communicate clearly
- prioritise health (both physical and mental)
- overcome difficulties
- recognise achievements
- live the St John's Values
Intent:
Our curriculum is delivered through the discrete teaching of each subject. More information can be found on each subject page to the right. Whilst we teach each subject discretely, we have ensured that purposeful links are made between subjects as this supports with applying skills and retrieving knowledge in different contexts. This ensures concepts have been 'learnt' and embedded into long term memory.
impact
At St John's, we recognise that ‘successes’ will look different for all pupils and that this should not solely be measured in relation to English and Maths outcomes at the end of KS1 and KS2. If the intent and implementation elements of the curriculum have been successfully achieved, pupils will not only be ready for the next stage of their education, but will also be well-rounded, articulate, interesting, caring and tolerant individuals. Although many of these characteristics cannot be specifically measured, assessed or quantified, we do assess the impact of our curriculum in a wide variety of ways including: pupil attainment data; pupil progress data; regular low-stakes quizzing; monitoring of pupil books; regular pupil discussions; pupil contribution and attitudes; termly Trust QA visits; annual parental questionnaires; pupil behaviour and attitudes when learning beyond the school.