Calder Vale St John C of E Primary School
Grow, Achieve, Explore
Our PSHE curriculum aims to ensure that children leave our school with the knowledge, understanding and skills to play a successful and positive role in society in the future. We aim to ensure that our children are happy, healthy and progressive with an outstanding awareness of themselves, their community and the wider world.
Our curriculum is delivered using 4 main threads of learning that are revisited and built-upon in each key stage:
My Wellbeing: Physical wellbeing, mental health, keeping safe and the media
My Relationships: families and close relationships, friendships, bullying and harmful behaviour, safe relationships, respecting others and communities
My Future: Growing and changing, economics and aspirations
My Faith: Acting on our school mission statement of 'Reach Up, Reach In, Reach Out'
As our children progress through school, their understanding of their wellbeing, relationships, responsibilities and futures becomes more in-depth, allowing them to demonstrate and apply their learning. For example, our Key Stage 1 children begin their economics journey through learning about how we get money, our Lower Key Stage 2 children discuss how they can make decisions with money to keep it safe and in Upper Key Stage 2, our children learn about how decisions with money can impact others. They then take part in ‘the fiver challenge’ where they apply their knowledge of spending, saving and making informed decisions in a challenge to raise money for school.
My Wellbeing
My wellbeing is a thread that runs throughout the school year and includes physical wellbeing (healthy eating, alcohol and drug education, physical education, health and safety) mental wellbeing and online safety. Our mental health and wellbeing programme, myHappymind, supports our children in learning strategies and developing habits to regulate their own mental health. myHappymind is an award winning, whole school (and pre-school) curriculum. It teaches children preventative habits that support positive mental health, resilience and self-esteem. All concepts that are covered within the myHappymind curriculum are based in Science and research and teach children the 'real reasoning' behind emotions and emotional responses. Taught to all children in school, myHappymind is delivered by teachers through the use of quizzes, short videos, songs, games and stories.
Click here to find out more about myHappymind and access their parent resources or podcasts.
My Faith
As a church school, our thread of faith throughout our PSHE curriculum ensures that children reach out into the world, reach into God’s ideal for them and reach up for the support they may need. We act as stewards with an understanding that we are God’s creation, made in His image, to love ourselves and the world around us. Our children learn to carry the school's mission statement with them wherever they go.
My Relationships
Children learn about how to recognise, build and maintain positive relationships with people around them including their families, friends and the community. The thread also ensures children consider relationships both in-person and online and challenges them to think about how these types of relationship can differ.
My Future
Children think about the choices they make now and compare them to the ones they will make in the future. They also think about their growing independence, economic (financial) independence, career aspirations and any transitions into new classes within school or into high school. Our Upper Key Stage 2 children benefit from an outstanding careers education programme, Positive Footprints, that teaches them about transferrable skills, different careers and setting goals.
Click here to find out more about Positive Footprints.
PSHE at Our School
PSHE is centred around our children's needs and though it is taught as a standalone lesson, PSHE also has many branches and is a cross-curricular subject in our school. Subjects such as Computing and DT also embed personal, social, physical and emotional skills for the future such as healthy eating and internet safety.
In PSHE lessons, children are encouraged to be open, reflective and courageous and learn that their classrooms are a safe place to ask big questions. They share their learning and thoughts through discussion, their individual myHappymind journals and their class PSHE scrapbooks. During our school revisiting weeks, children also showcase and apply their learning across the curriculum through writing, Computing, music and more.