Teaching & Learning in the Prep School

Teaching and learning lies at the heart of St John’s. We aim to provide the finest all-round education for your child, within a supportive community and caring, family atmosphere. The curriculum consists of all the activities that we organise to promote learning, personal growth and development. The main aim of our curriculum is to offer a broad, balanced and stimulating education to every child, that extends our most able pupils while offering support for pupils who find academic work more challenging. Year 3 and 4 teaching uses topic-based learning and all years follow the broad outline of the National Curriculum but, as an independent school, the schemes of work are developed and extended as we feel best meets the needs of our pupils. We also prepare pupils for entrance tests and pre-tests for their next school. These most commonly happen in Year 6 and include maths, English, verbal and non-verbal reasoning.

 

Skills for the Future

We want to ensure that our pupils not only love their time at St John’s, but leave well prepared for the next stage of their education and for life beyond school. In addition to subject knowledge, we teach our pupils subject skills and the Dean Close Foundation skills, the 5 Cs: Collaboration, Communication, Critical thinking, Creativity and Compassion. We believe these will help our pupils flourish. We use the Skills for the Future ethos throughout the school, giving every child a chance to shine. 

Using a skills framework to our curriculum allows teachers, who know our pupils really well, to design courses to excite, engage and challenge every one of them – from high fliers to those who need support to maximise their learning potential. This means that teachers can foster a love of learning rather than racing through learning facts for a final exam; we look at their progress across the whole time they are learning. We nurture skills that we know our pupils will increasingly need in the workplace of the future.

Our St John's Independent Learning Project is a real highlight of the Year 8; pupils have their own free choice of a project, and they love the opportunity to explore a passion in greater depth or discover a new one. Not only do our pupils enjoy completing their project, they also learn task management, how to research and independence - invaluable skills that will help them flourish at Senior School.