What makes us special

Here at St John's we are proud of so many things that make us special.

Our curriculum combines focused age related learning in the core subjects with a cross-curricular Topic approach for other subjects. We have also begun to re-design our curriculum in order to provide more opportunities for our KEY DRIVERS of our curriculum: Diligence, St John's Ways, Wider Horizons, Citizenship, Love of Language.

Every child, every year, will be involved in a class production - not just the Reception / Y6 Christmas production. This means that every year, every child will develop their confidence, speaking and listening skills, co-operative learning and simply their chance to shine!

Each year, every child will have swimming lessons and have specialist sports coaching as part of our PE Curriculum. We also have a huge and diverse range of after school clubs delivered by teachers, parents, governors and external coaches.

We have a Breakfast Club  to support those families that need extended hours provision. These clubs are run by our TAs who know the children, care for them and support their learning as unique individuals.

Our WAYS We want our children to develop; Respect, Trust, Justice, Love & Friendship, Hope and Health (physical & mental).   They have termly focus in collective worship and are highly valued by parents and children alike - they recognise that it helps children to build a core set of values and principles to guide them through life. Whats more, our WAYS are built into our Behaviour Policy - so they are more than simply our values...they are the WAY we behave, the WAY we are, the WAY to be.  

We have regular Church links through Parish members that deliver fortnightly 'Open the Book' collective worship and when visit St John's Church regularly for special family services. 

Pupil Voice in our school is firmly embedded in all that we do. We have weekly circle times in PSHE, regular Class Councils that feed into the School Council meetings that help develop our school, a Spirituality Council that focuses on ways to develop and express our spirituality and Sports Ambassadors that run lunch time clubs.

Our Jigsaw PSHE curriculum explicitly teaches calming down, stress management techniques and strategies - a 'mindfulness' approach to give children the foundations to help them manage the stresses of modern life in teenage years and adulthood.

We aim to personalise the learning of all children through a personalised curriculum that includes children helping to identify what they would like to learn. This is exemplified in our Learning Log homework (please see the HOMEWORK page) that allows each and every child to take control over their learning - developing their own individual passions.

We offer specially trained staff as ELSA provision to work closely with children who have worries they need to talk through.

Our SENCO leads the school on focused intervention and support programmes for pupils just behind age related expectations ans for those children with special educational needs.