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Calder Vale St John C of E Primary School
Grow, Achieve, Explore
Our Curriculum
Our Curriculum Intent Statement
'In their own unique style, and in the ways which suit them best, children in our school will develop knowledge and skills which stay with them and on which they can continue to build new learning throughout their lives; as outward looking, forward thinking, open minded individuals.'
At Calder Vale St. John's CE Primary School we place our learners at the heart of our curriculum. As a small school, we really do know our children inside out - their educational and emotional needs, their interests, their aspirations and most importantly, what makes them unique. This enables us to carefully tailor the learning experiences we offer to their individual needs, interests and learning styles. Our curriculum grows and develops throughout the year along with our children and we make fantastic use of our wonderful environment to facilitate this.
Our curriculum this year is firmly focussed on giving our children the experiences they have missed out on as a result of the COVID virus and ensuring that their learning is 'sticky'! This means our children will know more and remember more because they will be given lots of opportunities to revisit prior learning in different ways.
The British Values of Democracy, The Rule of Law, Individual Liberty, Mutual respect and Tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs are woven carefully into our curriculum and can be seen this year for example in:
- Our work on SIKHISM through RE this year. We have joined with Building Bridges Burnley, 'a partnership of faith organisations who are working with others to celebrate diversity, to promote dialogue and activities to develop understanding and to achieve equality and justice'. Our first Sikhism Workshop, led by Kash from Building Bridges will be taking place this term and we hope to visit a Sikh temple later in the year and meet some children who worship there.
- Our recent membership of the 'School Linking Network' who support schools and communities to develop a positive, cohesive ethos by helping children, young people and adults to explore identity, celebrate diversity, promote community, and champion equality. We hope to begin forming links with two schools in the centre of Preston whose community is culturally very different to our own. Please keep a look out on our website for further information.
- Our History projects this year, in which our infant children will find out about why and how we commemorate the birthdays of some very important British people such as our Queen and Shakespeare and also about some of our most celebrated British sports events and sports people. Our junior children will study 'Crime and Punishment' and find out about the history of the police service in our country in addition to finding out about why and how the Anglo Saxon Kings introduced 'trial by jury'.
-Our Geography projects this year, in which our infant children will find out about the four nations which come together to make the United Kingdom and our junior children will investigate Europe and our place within it.
- Our PSHE topics this year, in which our infant children will learn about valuing difference and types of bullying and our junior children will find out what stereotypes are and how to challenge them along with investigating our rights as British Citizens and the responsibilities which come with these and the work of our NHS.
We look for opportunities to show our children how the subjects they enjoy in school could become part of the careers they choose to pursue when they become adults. We will be bringing the curriculum to life in a variety of ways, tailored to the needs and interests of our children. So far this year, amongst other things, we have done this by:
- inviting a professional textile artist into school who led a wet felting workshop with the children in which they created their own bird houses to attract wildlife to their gardens
- worked together with Laura from 'Gardening to Grow' to develop our school allotment and plant our own vegetables
- meeting a Birds or Prey expert who introduced our infant children to his owls as part of their study of the story 'Owl Babies'
- introducing weekly forest school lessons, which the children have absolutely loved - enabling them to better understand the beautiful environment we are lucky enough to learn in; stay safe in the forest and discover the joys of foraging. Much of our forest school work has been linked to other areas of our curriculum particularly our study of living things and their habitats.
You can find out more about what the children are learning about in each of our classes on our class pages and our newsletters.
Our Curriculum Map
If you have any questions regarding the curriculum we teach, please contact the school directly.