Our Curriculum Offer

At Godalming Junior School, we provide a broad, ambitious and demanding curriculum, which is inclusive and recognises the different needs, background and abilities of the children who attend. 
 
Wherever possible, learning takes place through practical, first hand experiences focussing on developing real skills that can be used in a variety of interesting and challenging topic based contexts.
 
Our Love, Live, Learn ethos, coupled with our Values Based Education commitment and UNICEF Rights Respecting School status permeates through both our formal curriculum and our genuinely bespoke 10richment programme and contributes to the excellent behaviour, learning attitudes and exceptional attendance levels. Put simply, the children love coming to school at GJS!
 
Below you will find our subject reports created by our skilful, outward looking and forward thinking team of teachers who regularly monitor, scrutinise and seek to improve their subject area to ensure it is fit for purpose in the modern age. We are unflinching as a school to equip the children with key skills and knowledge to apply in a range of contexts and provide the building blocks for future learning and success. 
 
Each subject holds high status at the school and each subject lead is the main flagbearer and 'go to' professional offering advice, assistance and sign posting to others.
 
Curriculum INTENT
It is the schools intent to ensure our curriculum is ambitious, inclusive and rich built on HIGH QUALITY TEXTS and instils CORE VALUES at every opportunity. We believe that though success in English and Maths are integral to education, we believe ALL subjects form a fundamental part of the learning journey for children at Godalming Junior School. We have unique designated learning areas for Music, Art and DT, PE and Food Technology which further emphasises the importance of the children accessing the full breadth of the primary curriculum. A robust, Rights Respecting and values based approach to our PSHE curriculum ensures that, along with other curricular areas, the school prepares the children extremely well for life outside the school gates and for the next chapter in their education. The formal subjects we teach are:
English
Maths
Science
Computing
The Arts (including Music, Art, DT and Drama)
Humanities (including Geography, History and RE)
MFL (French and Spanish)
Music
PE 
PSHE
 
Curriculum IMPLEMENTATION
The curriculum is taught by highly skilled, flexible, creative and committed staff who put a huge amount of effort and time to ensure ALL areas of the curriculum are taught to a high standard, with a strong focus on the National Curriculum PURPOSE OF STUDY and the school's PROGRESSION OF SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE plan. We also pride ourselves on the outstanding learning behaviours of our children who readily contribute and play an active role in their learning which is nurtured by the adults in the school. Alongside our curriculum we run our '10richment' programme of theme weeks throughout the year. Introduced in 2018, our 10 theme weeks develop the soft skills in the children and expose them to the 'hidden' curriculum. This has proven to be effective and successful in exposing the children to the wider world and promotes an appreciation of the extraordinary diversity of the world around us and it's people. This year our theme weeks are:
 
POETRY WEEK - (coinciding with National Poetry Day)
HEALTHY WEEK - (coinciding with World Mental Health Day)
REMEMBRANCE WEEK - (coinciding with Armistice Day)
HUMAN RIGHTS WEEK - (coinciding with Human Rights Day)
HERO WEEK - (coinciding with Martin Luther King Day)
BOOK WEEK - (coinciding with World Book Day)
STEM WEEK - (coinciding with British Science Week)
EARTH WEEK - (coinciding with Earth Hour)
INTERNATIONAL WEEK - (Linked to our unique MFL curriculum))
ARTS WEEK - (coinciding with our G-Fest Talent Show and Y6 Production)
 
These weeks encourage staff to bring areas of the curriculum to life by any means they feel is appropriate and purposeful. This may involve trips or inviting visitors into school and being creative by linking these themes to areas of their curriculum.
 
Curriculum IMPACT
We regularly assess the impact of our curriculum by again, looking at books, monitoring planning and talking to the children about their learning. The children are very positive about their school.