Our Curriculum

At St John's Green our curriculum is taught over three time periods of approximately 12 weeks each. Each time period is called an 'Assessment Period' and within that assessment period we plan, teach, monitor, assess and review the children's attainment and progress. At the end of an Assessment Period, parents will receive an Assessment Period Report which details how your well your child has progressed over the last 12 weeks and the next steps in their learning. Please see: Assessment Period Reports.
 
Each Assessment Period is broken down into two parts. The first part (10 weeks) gives the skills for the project. The second part (2 weeks) allows children to link their learning together - it enables children to create, predict, reflect, imagine, evaluate and generalise or in other words it empowers them to have a 'Mastery' of their learning. This is the 'Extended Abstract' element of SOLO where the children apply their learning in different contexts
 
Assessment Period 1, September - December.
Assessment period 2, January - March.
Assessment Period 3, April - July.
 
 If you require more information about our curriculum then please contact the school directly.
 
 
 
 
A curriculum is a clever way of saying - this is what we're going to teach your children.
 
Our curriculum is driven by key concepts in each Assessment Period, these in effect, form a central spine that runs through every year group in the school and these drivers; which include both our Jigsaw (approach to PSHE) and Rights Respecting School Articles mean that everyone is asking the same question but at at a curriculum level that is both suitable and applicable to them.
 
Key Concepts
AP1 - Identity, Community and Diversity.
AP2 - Democracy, Education, Aspirations and Responsibility.
AP3 - Dignity, Equality, Health and Enterprise.
 
For each Assessment Period (AP) we ask a 'BIG' question.
 
AP1 - Where are my Roots?
AP2 - Who is Responsible for the World?
AP3 - How do we make Good Decisions?
 
Our long term plan shows what each year group will learn each Assessment Period.
 
Sometimes subjects will be taught discretely (as individual subjects) at other times teachers will utilise the natural links that exist between subject areas and the children will learn more than one subject at the same time.
 Other elements integral to our Curriculum.
 
1, The Learning Pit.

The Learning Pit or (Learning Challenge) is a seven-step process, which helps children, understand how their learning can develop. In effect, it challenges us to be stuck in our learning and to seek ways to climb out of the pit – utilising skills such as our Learning Dispositions.

 

2, SOLO Taxonomy

SOLO, which stands for the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome, is a means of classifying learning outcomes in terms of their complexity, enabling us to assess children’s’ work in terms of its quality not of how many bits of this and of that they have got right.

SOLO is used not only in assessment, but also in designing the curriculum in terms of the level of learning outcomes intended.

It’s all about increasing the levels of complexity in tasks as pupils move through their learning. Think of it as a kind of do-it-yourself differentiation for students.

Solo uses symbols to represent where pupils are in their learning. For example, a circle shows that they are at the prestructural stage, where they are not yet sure about the concept they are learning about.

With time, pupils move to the unistructural stage, represented by one vertical line. This means that they are getting to grips with the underlying concepts and beginning to formulate basic ideas.

The next stage is multistructural, where children are beginning to make connections to other ideas, which is followed by relational and extended abstract stages, where they can confidently connect concepts to a wider field and see them in perspective.

 

3, Road to Writing

The Road to Writing is a consistent way of teaching Writing to our children. The concept of the ‘writing journey’ was launched as part of the St. John’s Green School’s Visible Learning programme. The RtW ensures that children have a clear starting point (Hook Lesson) and end point (Hot Task) during units of work. The RtW offers opportunities for feedback, reflection (linked to our Learning Disposition; Reflecting Roxy) and the explicit teaching of writing skills.  Constant exposure to a range of high quality texts, anaylsis of genres and opportunties to edit and write sustained, coherent pieces enable our children to explore ways in which to write with a clear understanding of ‘Audience and Purpose’.

Curriculum Letters
Integral to our curriculum is SOLO Taxonomy and our Learning Dispositions. An overview of these is included below. 
Jigsaw - Changing Me - Summer 2