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Intent:

At St John's Church School, our curriculum aims to change lives and achieve academic excellence, empowering students to live life in all its fullness. We cultivate a sense of belonging and recognise that learning is life-transforming. Our goal is to enable all students to flourish, enabling a better future through a continual, wholehearted journey of growth and discovery. We are committed to developing courageous advocates who embody our core values and are prepared to make meaningful contributions to society.

 

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Implement:

Our bespoke Spirit Curriculum has been constructed to prepare our children academically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually to be active participants in a global society. The overarching, termly curriculum questions and core values cement the different strands of our curriculum together, allowing children to explore the importance of living a life with values such as courage and hope. 

 

Spirit Curriculum is underpinned by the principle that knowledge empowers children. It is uniquely challenging, providing coherent, well-defined subject matter developed by knowledgeable subject leads to ensure children develop broad and deep subject understanding within discrete subject areas. Knowledge and skills are meticulously sequenced for progression within each subject area and there are Learning Intentions for each phase of learning. Deliberate opportunities to revisit and embed learning have been created with horizontal and diagonal links across subject areas through concepts such as democracy and monarchy, promoting interleaving and cross-contextualisation. Knowledge organisers have been carefully crafted for children to understand both the bigger picture and the smaller steps in their learning.

 

In addition, our inner curriculum contributes to an outstanding, holistic personal development education for our children. It includes Thrive, sports mentoring, drumming tuition, drawing and talking therapy and lego therapy where children receive individualised support to be emotionally, socially and spiritually ready for learning. Our curriculum draws upon inspirational people who represent global citizens from a range of diverse backgrounds and provide real-life examples of overcoming adversity by applying our school values and developing a strong knowledge base. They inspire our children to greatness.

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As leaders and teachers, we ensure that our curriculum and teaching are informed by the latest research, including from cognitive science on memory, knowledge retention and practice. This approach helps students know more and remember more, making knowledge stick for all learners so they can continually flourish.

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The ambition of our curriculum empowers all learners to understand, retain and build their knowledge and skills. Specific needs are met through purposeful scaffolding which enables all learners to achieve well across the curriculum.

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Impact:

The impact of our curriculum is evident in the academic achievements and personal growth of our students. We foster a school community where learners have an infectious desire to acquire new knowledge, driven by the principle that knowledge empowers children. Our knowledge-rich culture ensures all students have a broad understanding of the world, equipping them to transform it in the future.

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All pupils, regardless of background or needs, access the best that has been said and thought. These values guide us as a learning community, helping us develop all children within our school to become successful, active and prepared citizens of British and global society.

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Our curriculum design is regularly reviewed through a robust monitoring and evaluation approach to ensure impact against intended outcomes. Subject leaders use their intent, implementation and impact plans to continually evaluate their subject area and plan actions for continual improvement.

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Teachers and subject leaders assess children’s knowledge and skills through forensic assessment for learning, curriculum quizzes and Kahoot quizzing.