Curriculum

Click below on a subject to find out more about the curriculum for that specific subject area

 “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”? Socrates

Intent

At St John’s, our mission is to build high standards through a caring community. We strive to foster a love for learning in all our children, enabling them to become lifelong learners.

Our 5 core values (Life Skills, Wider Opportunities, Community, Christian Values and Core Standards) form the spine of our curriculum. They are interwoven into all areas of the curriculum and included within the yearly calendar of events, to ensure all children have the opportunity to enrich their life experiences. We believe that children should be given exposure to as varied a range of experiences as possible throughout their time at St John’s, beyond the scope of the National Curriculum.

Our learning behaviours are incorporated across the curriculum, building skills for learning.

In order to allow for all children to fully engage with our enriched curriculum, we have developed 6 learning behaviours, designed to help our children understand the process of learning. The characters below represent the behaviours we want to celebrate and are introduced to our youngest children in a book prior to them starting at St John’s. Click on the characters’ names to read their stories!

• Perseverance (Pablo the Penguin):

Keep going, don’t give up, practice and commit to something to improve, learn form your mistakes, try different ways of doing things

• Challenge (Chelsea the Chimp):

Taking pride, pushing yourself, challenging one another, striving to be your best, accepting that you need to work hard, being inquisitive

• Teamwork (Todd the Tiger):

Developing positive relationships, turn taking, collaboration, listening to others, collective responsibility, empathy, empowering others, ‘no I in team’

• Responsibility (Rusty the Reindeer):

Ownership, leadership, intrinsic /self motivation, serving the school, sacrifice

• Creativity (Candy the Caterpillar):

Thinking outside the box, flair, not taking the easy option, diversity, asking ‘what if?’, valuing difference, originality, having own ideas, courage in own convictions, individualism

• Concentration/Focus (Connie the Crocodile):

Self-discipline, seeing things through to the end, absorption, self-motivation, managing distractions

A curriculum for all:

All children’s needs are taken into account in our planning and teaching. We plan to challenge all children and take into account the child’s progress across the whole curriculum. Planning, teaching methods, the environment and resources may all be adapted to allow the best access for the children to every subject. Activities may require adaptations to challenge and go into greater depth as well as to provide for those whose skills and knowledge have not developed as quickly.  

Implementation

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”? Benjamin Franklin

As a school, we take great pride in the variety of opportunities we offer to all children. Some of the ways we try to incorporate our values are:

Core Standards:

• We work in phases following a 2 year curriculum cycle to enable children to work alongside their peers. We aim to provide a variety of ways of working – independent, group, projects etc to develop a range of skills.
• Our thematic approach enables skills taught and developed in English and maths to be transferred across the curriculum and enables links to be made using knowledge gained in different subject areas.
• We achieve consistently high standards across all phases.
• Reading has a very high priority at St John's as identified by Ofsted.

Life Skills:

• Theme days/weeks are held thoughout the school year to provide different opportunities e.g. Eat Fit Keep Fit, Learning behaviours, life skills, the great outdoors etc
• Forest Schools is offered to all our year 4 children. Here, they learn about nature and survival in a more natural setting which has been cultivated on our school grounds.

Wider Opportunities:

• Many events are held to celebrate achievements in all aspects of our curriculum.
• Our very popular music evenings are held twice a year and allow all musicians to perform to an audience. Every child in the school has the chance to learn an instrument as the whole of year 5 receive weekly cello lessons from Mr Rayner!
• A variety of sports clubs are offered with children participating in competitive sports against other Stockport schools.
• Lower KS2 attend a modern languages celebration annually to demonstrate their linguistic skills in front of an audience of parents.
• We have a thriving ECO club, who learn about gardening, protecting the environment, growing vegetables and keep our ECO garden and the school grounds looking bright and colourful!
• Residential trips take place for all KS2 children. Here, they have the chance to try their hand at more adventure sports such as abseiling and canoeing, as well as to develop more independence and resilience.
• Trips and visitors are planned throughout the year to deepen the children’s understanding in foundation subject areas.
• Theatre trips and live in school performances are planned regularly to allow children to experience the awe and wonder of watching literature come to life.
• Hooks at the start of new topics are routinely used to stimulate the children’s interest in new topics and celebration events involving the wider school community, such as our school museums, are held to showcase what has been learnt.
• We are are also part of the Linking Schools opportunity, which allows us to work with a local school with a different catchment area. Working together allows the children to learn from each other and share in experiences.

Community:

• Our choir performs alongside Young Voices at Manchester Arena each year.
• Every Christmas, our choir perform at ‘Golden Oldies’, a carol service at the Church for residents of…
• Every class performs an assembly for the school and their parents to demonstrate what they have been learning.
• Eco club is well established, allowing children to learn about gardening, growing vegetables and looking after our environment.
• Our PTA is incredibly active and effective, holding regular community events to generate income to support the growth of our school.

Christian Values:

Our three core Christian values are service, sacrifice and love.

• These values are demonstrated through acts of charity which happen regularly throughout our school year. Regular events include MacMillan, Children in Need and Comic Relief and Francis House.
• Our Harvest celebration collects food donations for the local foodbank. School council members deliver the donations each year and learn more about the work that foodbank does in our community.
• Each half term in assemblies we focus on a different Christian value.

Impact

“We learn from failure, not from success!”? Bram Stoker, Dracula

This is some of the comments made by parents in a recent parental questionnaire:

Wider Opportunities

Trips and visits

As a school, we recognise the importance that visits and visitors in improving the children’s interest and understanding in the topic areas studied. Some trip are annual events: Reception attend the nursery rhyme challenge and year 6 celebrate their time at St John’s with a leaving ceremony at Manchester Cathedral. Others are planned to support our curriculum and include the Hat Museum, MOSI, Stockport Air Raid Shelters and many others.

Residentials

Our residential trips are a huge part of a wider opportunities programme. They are offered to each year group in KS2.

Years 3 and 4 visit Plas Nantglyn for 2 nights in the summer term.

Year 5 and 6 spend a week at PGL in the spring term. Here, they learn about being responsible and independent, whilst challenging themselves through a range of adventurous activities. High ropes, raft building and the zip wire are some of the highlights that the children remember forever.

Music

There are many opportunties for the children to experience and hopefully develop a love of learning to play an instrument or sing at St John's.  There is a weekly choir who perform at various community events, whole school events such as the Christmas and Summer Fairs and even get to perform with 8000 other children as part of the Young Vocies Concert each year.  In addition to the curriculum lessons, children also get the chance to learn an instrument by paying for additional music tuition.  We currently offer steel pans, ukelele, guitars and violins.  We also provide for free the opportunity for all children in Year 5 to learn to play the Cello.

Forest Schools

In Year 4, children spend the year taking part in forest school which aims to develop their interpersonal skills, provide time for personal reflection and development whilst also learning some outdoor skills.  This takes place on the Heaton Mersey Common and in our specifically developed Forest School Area 'Nemus Wood' and is always a highlight of the week for children.

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