The School Day and Curriculum
At Crosscanonby St John's CE Primary school we are very proud of the broad and varied curriculum that we offer. Children enjoy coming to school and are always excited about the different things that we learn. The teachers deliver the curriculum in exciting and engaging ways and we use fabulous specialist teachers in areas such as sport, modern foreign languages and art.
Below is an outline of our typical school day:
08:30-08:40 - Children arrive at school. Children go straight into their classroom where activities are ready for them.
EYFS
Between 08:30 and 09:00, the children settle into the day with engaging morning transition activities tailored to their developmental needs. During this soft start, pupils focus on practicing writing their names, using tracing cards or writing independently to master correct letter formation and pencil control. Alongside name writing, early interventions take place through playful, hands-on tasks: children strengthen their fine motor skills with playdough, explore phonics by matching letters and initial sounds, practice early counting with physical objects, and enjoy quietly sharing picture books in the reading corner.
YEARS 1 - 6
Between 08:30 and 08:40 - Starter activities and interventions begin - these include: quick maths, spelling practice, SPAG reinforcement, reading.
09:15 - Lesson 1
10:30 Playtime
10:45 - Lesson 2
12:00 - Lunch time
13:00-13:10 - Handwriting
13:10-13:20 - Times Tables/Maths Focus
13:20 - Lesson 3
14:00 - Lesson 4
15:00-15:10 - Collective Worship
15:10 - 15:15 - Story time - teacher reading aloud to children - ALL CLASSES
15:15 - End of school day - children will be escorted individually to parents at the school gate.
This daily timetable amounts to 33.75 hours per week.
We hold a whole school act of collective worship at 15:00. Friday is our celebration assembly.
Early Years Foundation Stage - EYFS
Our Approach to Learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
At Crosscanonby St John's C of E Primary, we believe that high-quality early education lays the groundwork for a lifetime of success. Incorporating both our Nursery and Reception provision, our EYFS curriculum is ambitious, sequentially planned, and carefully structured to ensure every child—including those with SEND and disadvantaged backgrounds—makes strong progress from their individual starting points.
Intent: A Curriculum Built for Curiosity and Progression
Our curriculum is designed to give children the baseline knowledge, vocabulary, and cultural capital they need to succeed in Year 1 and beyond. Guided by the statutory EYFS framework, we focus heavily on the three Prime Areas as the essential building blocks for all future learning:
- Communication & Language: We prioritise a language-rich environment. Through high-quality interactions, storytelling, and explicit vocabulary teaching, children learn to express themselves, listen actively, and build strong language foundations.
- Personal, Social & Emotional Development (PSED): Underpinned by our 'Christian Values', we foster independence, self-regulation, resilience, and respect for others within a safe, nurturing environment.
- Physical Development: We systematically build gross and fine motor precision, developing the strength and co-ordination required for confident mark-making, writing, and physical independence.
These Prime Areas are strengthened and applied through the four Specific Areas: Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding the World, and Expressive Arts and Design.
Implementation: Direct Teaching, Play, and Scaffolding
We deliver our curriculum through a deliberate balance of adult-led direct instruction and purposeful, high-quality play.
- Systematic Early Reading & Phonics (Twinkl Phonics): Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. We use Twinkl Phonics, a DfE-validated Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme, to teach reading and spelling systematically from Nursery into Reception. Children engage in daily, structured phonics lessons where new sounds, tricky words, and blending skills are explicitly taught. Early reading is reinforced through decodable books that strictly match each child's current phonic stage, ensuring they build reading fluency, accuracy, and confidence.
- Early Mathematics: Math teaching focuses on securing a deep, conceptual understanding of numbers to 10, spatial reasoning, and pattern recognition through concrete materials, practical activities, and visual representations.
- Characteristics of Effective Learning: Staff observe and scaffold how children learn—focusing on Playing and Exploring, Active Learning, and Creating and Thinking Critically—to ensure core knowledge and skills are embedded into long-term memory.
- Inclusion & Adaptive Practice: Staff identify speech, language, or developmental needs early. Targeted support, phonics keep-up interventions, and environmental adaptations are put in place immediately so that every child can access the full curriculum.
Impact: Ready for Key Stage 1 and Beyond
The impact of our EYFS curriculum is evaluated through ongoing, formative observation that directly informs next steps without creating unnecessary assessment burdens.
- Smooth Transition: Children leave Reception having achieved the Good Level of Development (GLD) targets. They are articulate, confident, and phonically equipped for the transition into Key Stage 1.
- Holistic Growth: Pupils demonstrate high levels of independence, curiosity, and emotional readiness, embodying our school values as caring and polite members of our community.
Please click on the link below for the 2 year overview for EYFS:
/files/documents/EYFS_Long_Term_Overview_Crosscanonby_2025-2026_year_B__.docx
Key Stages 1 and 2
Below is an outline how Crosscanonby St John's C of E Primary combines academic ambition, rich local experiences, and our core Christian values to inspire every child across Key Stages 1 and 2:
INTENT
At Crosscanonby St John's C of E Primary, our curriculum is designed to recognise prior learning, overcome barriers, and use our local area to provide rich, first-hand experiences. Built upon the National Curriculum 2014, our subject schemes of work are ambitious, coherently planned, and sequentially structured to ensure cumulative knowledge and skills acquisition from EYFS to Key Stage 2.
Underpinned by Fundamental British Values and our pupil-chosen ‘Christian Values’, we aim to cultivate resilient, creative, and critical thinkers. We foster enquiring minds by empowering pupils to contribute to research topics, ensuring all children—including those with SEND and disadvantaged backgrounds—develop both academic excellence and essential life skills.
IMPLEMENTATION
We deliver a broad, balanced timetable across Key Stages 1 and 2 encompassing English, Maths, Science, Computing, PE, RE, Music, PSHE, MFL - French (KS2), and alternating units of History/Geography and Art/Design & Technology.
Teachers employ evidence-based approaches to help pupils transfer key knowledge into long-term memory, adapting lessons to ensure full accessibility for all learners.
Learning is embedded through purposeful in-school and extra-curricular enhancements, local fieldwork, and stimulating environments that promote high engagement and positive learning attitudes.
Detailed progression maps and subject overviews ensure consistency and depth across all curriculum areas.
IMPACT
The impact of our curriculum is evidenced not only through academic attainment and progress across core and foundation subjects, but through the holistic development of our pupils.
Ongoing assessment and pupil voice demonstrate that children retain core knowledge, articulate their learning with confidence, and are fully prepared for the next stage of their education.
Achievements across academic, personal, and social domains are celebrated weekly. Pupils leave us as polite, empathetic, and respectful individuals who make positive contributions to their wider community.
Mathematics & English at Crosscanonby St John's
At Crosscanonby St John's C of E Primary, our core curriculum is designed to give every child the foundational skills, confidence, and love of learning they need to succeed in everyday life and beyond.
Mathematics
We aim to develop confident, resilient mathematicians who enjoy problem-solving and are not afraid to learn from their mistakes.
Our curriculum fosters confident, resilient mathematicians who embrace challenge and learn through discovery. We follow Mastering Number in EYFS to build strong early number sense and use White Rose Maths from Years 1 to 6 to ensure consistent, deep mathematical understanding across the school.
Daily Core Lessons: Structured whole-class teaching follows our progressive calculation policy, guiding pupils seamlessly from concrete manipulatives to pictorial models and abstract written methods.
Fluency & Retrieval: Beyond the main maths lesson, pupils in Years 1–6 complete daily arithmetic (Quick Maths) and spend 10 minutes consolidating essential times tables and number bonds to build recall speed.
Reasoning & Problem-Solving: Children actively explain, prove, and justify their mathematical thinking, strengthening critical reasoning and verbal communication.
Mixed-Age Support: Adaptable planning ensures tailored support for pupils needing consolidation, alongside targeted extension tasks to stretch high achievers.
Real-World Connections: Practical math skills are applied naturally across the wider curriculum, particularly in Science and Design & Technology projects.
/files/Maths_Progression_Map.docx
English: Reading & Phonics
Reading is at the heart of everything we do. We strive to nurture a lifelong love of books while ensuring every child develops fluent decoding and strong comprehension skills.
Early Reading & Twinkl Phonics
- Systematic Phonics: From Nursery and Reception, we use Twinkl Phonics, a DfE-validated scheme. Children learn graphemes, tricky words, and blending skills through engaging, multi-sensory lessons.
- Rhino Readers: Children practice reading using fully decodable Rhino Readers books (available in print and via our eBook app). These books strictly match the phonic sounds your child has learned in class.
- Daily Storytime: Every teacher reads aloud to their class daily, introducing pupils to rich vocabulary and diverse literature.
- Comprehension Skills: As decoding becomes natural, lessons focus on retrieval, inference, prediction, and understanding deeper text meanings.
Home-School Partnership: School teaches the core decoding skills, and home is where children practice! We host parent workshops to help you support your child's phonics and reading journey at home.
English: Writing & Oracy
We empower our pupils to communicate their ideas, knowledge, and creativity effectively for a variety of audiences and purposes—whether to entertain, inform, persuade, or discuss.
Developing Confident Writers
- Oracy & Spoken Language: Clear writing begins with spoken language. We encourage discussion, structured talk, and vocabulary building from the very start of school.
- Modelled & Guided Writing: Teachers model the writing process step-by-step, helping children structure their ideas using high-quality example texts and shared planning.
- Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling (GPS): Core skills are taught explicitly and reinforced daily through contextual writing tasks.
- Editing & Independence: Children learn to review, edit, and improve their work independently, building pride in their progress.
- Presentation: Formal handwriting instruction begins in Key Stage 1, with pupils developing a neat, joined cursive style from Year 2 onwards.
- Enrichment: Creative writing is brought to life through school trips, visiting theatre groups, and purposeful writing across History, Geography, and Science.
/files/English_-_Oracy_Progression_Map.docx
Foundation Subjects
At Crosscanonby St John's C of E Primary, our foundation subjects are carefully planned to ensure progressive, cumulative knowledge and skills acquisition across Key Stages 1 and 2.
To deliver an ambitious, high-quality curriculum tailored to our pupils' needs, we utilise specialist, evidence-informed schemes of work across our foundation subjects:
- Science, History, Geography, Art, and Design & Technology: Taught through the United Curriculum, providing systematically sequenced, knowledge-rich units that build deep conceptual understanding and make strong cross-curricular connections.
- PSHE & RSE: Delivered using Jigsaw, a mindful, spiral approach to Personal, Social, Health, and Relationships Education that supports emotional literacy, social skills, and spiritual development.
- Religious Education (RE): Taught using Questful RE, encouraging open inquiry, critical thinking, and a deep understanding of Christianity and world faiths in line with our school's Christian ethos.
- Computing: Structured through Purple Mash, giving children comprehensive hands-on experience in coding, digital literacy, information technology, and online safety.
- Modern Foreign Languages (French): Taught in Key Stage 2 using Grammarsaurus, embedding systematic vocabulary acquisition, phonics, and grammatical confidence in French.
PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINKS TO VIEW OUR TWO-YEAR PLANS FOR EACH CLASS:
PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINKS TO VIEW OUR PROGRESSION MAPS FOR THE FOUNDATION SUBJECTS:
/files/Science_Progression_Map.docx
/files/Art_Progression_Map.docx
/files/D-T_Progression_Map.docx
/files/Geography_Progression_Map.docx
/files/History_Progression_Map.docx
/files/French_Progression_of_Skills_Map.docx
https://crosscanonby-primary-school.schudio.com/files/documents/PE.docx
Homework
At our school, we view homework as a valuable opportunity to consolidate classroom learning, build independent study habits, and foster a strong partnership between home and school. Our approach to homework is balanced, purposeful, and fully accessible to every pupil.
Our Approach & Progression
We recognise the importance of family time, extra-curricular activities, and rest. Homework expectations increase gradually as pupils progress through the school, avoiding cognitive overload while preparing older children for secondary transition.
Particularly in EYFS and Key Stage 1, homework is designed to be an enjoyable, collaborative activity to complete alongside parents and carers.
To ensure equity of access for all pupils—including those with SEND or varying access to digital technology—homework is set across a range of flexible formats. This may include digital or oral tasks, as well as physical workbooks, reading diaries, and practical hands-on tasks. Where digital access at home is limited, alternative paper-based resources or school-based access are always provided.
Core Expectations & Home Support
-
Reading: Daily reading is the foundation of academic success. We ask parents to listen to their child read regularly, discuss story content, and sign their reading record, ensuring reading skills are reinforced beyond the classroom.
-
Fluency & Times Tables: Developing rapid, confident recall of multiplication facts is essential. Parents are encouraged to practice times tables systematically—testing out of sequence and applying facts to simple real-world problems. In accordance with national expectations, all pupils are supported to know their multiplication tables up to 12 x 12 by the end of Year 4.
Responsibility & Communication
Pupils are expected to complete and submit homework on time to develop responsibility and routine.
We understand that family circumstances vary. If a child is unable to complete their homework due to exceptional circumstances, parents/carers are asked to inform the class teacher so appropriate support can be offered.
Spellings
Spellings are given weekly from Yr 1 up and we encourage children to learn these in the following way: Look, Say, Cover, Write and Check, so that they cannot see the word as they write it down.
Religious Education
Our Religious Education curriculum is designed to foster spiritually aware, reflective, and articulate learners. Fully aligned with the Statement of Entitlement for Religious Education in Church Schools, our curriculum enables pupils to explore a rich diversity of Christian, religious, and worldviews while reflecting on their own personal belief systems.
Intent, Values & Ethos
Theologically Grounded Values: RE provides explicit opportunities for pupils to understand how our school values are deeply rooted in the Christian faith, while also identifying how these shared values resonate across diverse world religions, cultures, and non-religious worldviews.
SMSC & Character Development: The subject sits at the heart of pupils’ Spiritual, Moral, Social, and Cultural (SMSC) development. It actively cultivates British values—specifically mutual respect and tolerance—by building empathy, understanding, and appreciation for different traditions.
Oracy & Critical Thinking: We empower children to question, evaluate, express, and respectfully debate complex ideas. Through structured class discussions, pupils build the confidence to articulate their own opinions clearly while critically evaluating different perspectives.
Preparation for Life in Modern Britain: By exploring diverse worldviews and welcoming members of different faith communities, RE equips children to navigate a multi-faith society with wisdom, dignity, and compassion.
Implementation & Enrichment
RE is taught discreetly by class teachers every week using progressive, age-appropriate recording methods to capture children's ongoing reflections and deep thinking.
Enriched Learning: Classroom study is enhanced through visits to places of worship, interactive workshops, and meaningful interactions with guest speakers from local and wider faith groups.
Collective Worship Integration: Daily acts of Collective Worship complement our RE provision. Pupils take an active leadership role by writing prayers, selecting hymns, and leading reflections that tie directly into our Christian vision and termly values.
Please click the links below to view our two-year RE curriculum overview and Progression Map:
/files/RE_Progression_Map.docx
Relationships, Health and Sex Education
Our Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) curriculum is designed to equip pupils with the knowledge, skills, and values they need to lead safe, healthy, and fulfilling lives. Fully compliant with statutory Department for Education (DfE) guidance, our curriculum sits within our broader Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education framework and supports pupils' spiritual, moral, social, and cultural (SMSC) development.
Intent & Curriculum Design
Relationships Education and Health Education are compulsory for all primary-aged pupils. Lessons are age-appropriate, developmentally sequential, and tailored to the needs of our pupils.
Children explore positive relationships, online safety, physical health, mental well-being, healthy lifestyles, and basic first aid in a sensitive, inclusive, and factual manner.
Key aspects of human growth and reproduction are delivered through the National Curriculum for Science (including body parts, life cycles, and human development).
Sex Education & Parental Engagement
Beyond the compulsory Science curriculum, specific age-appropriate Sex Education is delivered to Year 6 pupils to prepare them for transition to secondary school.
We value working in close partnership with parents and carers. Prior to delivering the Year 6 Sex Education module, parents are informed and invited to view the teaching materials, discuss the content, and ask questions should they wish to.
Parents do not have the right to withdraw their child from statutory Relationships Education, Health Education, or any content covered within the National Curriculum for Science.
Parents do have the right to request that their child be withdrawn from the non-statutory Sex Education element delivered in Year 6. Requests should be made in writing to the Headteacher.
Educational Visits
Educational visits are an essential part of our curriculum, enriching pupils’ learning, supporting their Personal Development, and bringing classroom teaching to life through memorable, first-hand experiences. All visits are carefully planned in full alignment with the Department for Education (DfE) guidance on Health and Safety on Educational Visits and statutory safeguarding requirements.
Planning, Safety & Inclusivity
Trips, workshops, and local outdoor learning are planned intentionally throughout the academic year to deepen knowledge, foster curiosity, and support pupils' Spiritual, Moral, Social, and Cultural (SMSC) development.
Every off-site visit undergoes a detailed risk assessment conducted by the Headteacher to ensure pupil safety and well-being at all times.
We are committed to ensuring all educational visits are accessible to every pupil, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), through reasonable adjustments and tailored support.
Parental Consent & Charging Policy
Written consent is obtained for all visits involving travel beyond the local area or extensions past the normal school day. A annual blanket consent form covers low-risk, routine local visits (e.g., visits to the local church, library, or village walks).
In line with the DfE Charging for School Activities guidance, parents may be invited to make a voluntary contribution towards the cost of educational visits during school hours. No child will be excluded from an activity because their parents are unable or unwilling to pay; however, visits may be cancelled if insufficient funding is raised.
Residential Opportunities (Key Stage 2)
To build independence, resilience, and teamwork, pupils in Years 3, 4, 5, and 6 are offered progressive residential opportunities. We alternate these experiences annually to provide a balanced curriculum:
Outdoor & Adventurous Activities: Outdoor activity centers focusing on physical challenges, team-building, and environmental exploration.
Cultural City Breaks: Urban educational visits exploring history, arts, and heritage to broaden pupils' horizons and cultural capital.
Parental Involvement
We believe that strong partnerships with parents and carers are essential to ensuring pupils thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. We maintain clear, transparent, and regular communication between home and school through accessible digital learning platforms.
Whole-School Communication & Celebration: ClassDojo (Nursery – Year 6)
Across every class from Nursery to Year 6, we use ClassDojo as our primary platform to connect home and school:
Parents can view updates, photos, and insights into their child’s day-to-day progress, learning experiences, and developmental milestones.
ClassDojo provides a secure channel for whole-school announcements, class updates, and direct messaging between parents and class teachers.
We use ClassDojo to award Dojo points aligned with our school values, allowing parents to celebrate their child's achievements, positive behavior, and effort in real time.
Key Stage 1 & Key Stage 2 Digital Learning: Purple Mash
From Year 1 to Year 6, pupils also have access to Purple Mash, a comprehensive cloud-based learning environment:
Purple Mash supports digital literacy, computing, and cross-curricular learning both in the classroom and at home.
Sharing Achievement: Pupils use individual, secure login credentials to complete assigned tasks ("To-Dos"), showcase creative work, and share their completed projects with parents.
For support with digital access credentials for ClassDojo or Purple Mash, please contact your child’s class teacher.