Curriculum Areas
Curriculum
Introduction
Through the curriculum we want to ensure students are enthusiastic learners who take responsibility for their own learning, continually reviewing and reflecting on their individual progress.
We have embraced the changes within the new National Curriculum Framework and the 14-19 reforms as they provide increasing opportunities for developing flexible personalised learning programmes to meet individuals' strengths and needs. After undertaking a full curriculum review in 2007/08 in order to fully personalise learning and maximise engagement and achievement, curriculum models at KS3 and KS4 have been put in place that will begin to break down subject barriers and age related progression. These curriculum changes will roll out over the next three years. Learners will have access to a broad, balanced range of activities and experiences to enable them to become mature young adults confident and competent to make positive, lifelong contributions to our multi-cultural society and changing world.
Key Principles underpinning the curriculum
Our collaborative curriculum review process identified the following key principles to inform our curriculum design:
1. What kind of learners do we want?
- Students who
- have the essential skills of literacy, numeracy and ICT they need for education, employment and life
- have good personal, interpersonal, learning and thinking skills
- are creative, resourceful and able to solve problems, both independently and in teams
- are motivated and enthusiastic learners, who will take responsibility for their own learning and become life long learners
- are aspirational and willing to take risks
- develop safe and healthy life styles
- progress smoothly from primary through to 16+ and beyond
- are encouraged to go on to further and higher education.
2. How should we organise learning in order to develop this kind of learner?
- A personalised experience as far as possible achieved through
- Flexibility of the curriculum designed to meet individual needs
- Differentiation by task within lessons, particularly in mixed attainment groups when differentiation by outcome is not appropriate
- A curriculum which both allows for intervention work and engages and challenges higher attainers
- A curriculum which gives students a variety of experiences and uses time flexibly to meet learners' needs.
- To use a common language across curriculum areas - e.g. in literacy development and use of learning to learn skills, enabling students to make connections and see that these are transferrable.
3. What does good learning look like?
- Students clear about what they are expected to achieve by the end of the lesson and how this fits into the bigger picture of their learning.
- Students participating in active and practical tasks, involving individual and collaborative talk, exploration, questioning, prediction and investigation
- Students previous learning and interests are built upon, through purposeful applications of knowledge to different situations
- A classroom atmosphere where students are prepared to take risks
- Students are given
- o opportunities to review and reflect on their learning
- o thinking time before answering questions
Key Curriculum Design features:
1. A blocked Key Stage 3 Curriculum
To help achieve the above we aim to have a fully blocked curriculum at KS3, half blocks as a minimum for all subject areas. This allows for autonomy at curriculum team level as regards setting and grouping arrangements.
- We encourage teams to experiment with groupings, e.g. boys only groups, a combination of mixed attainment and setted lessons, the use of carousels to give students choice and build coherence into students learning experiences.
- Teams may also decide to truncate or delay the start of KS3 in order to tailor their provision to the needs of different groups of students.
- The grouping policy of the team will be subject to regular discussion and review. As long as the team is able to demonstrate that it's preferred arrangements lead to good progress and attainment for students the decisions about grouping will be left to the team leader, though groups will be reviewed by SLT members and Year team leaders to check for any problematic student combinations.
It also allows groups to be timetabled to add significant support capacity or stretch for students as in the case of our Year 7 Diploma Group which has been created for the most vulnerable students, those with very low prior attainment e.g. L3 and below at KS2. This group has the same two teachers for English, Maths, Humanities and ICT so that the transition to the many different teachers at secondary school is staggered for them and there are teachers who know the students and their learning needs really well. These students will join other groups for Science, PE, technical and Visual arts, Modern Languages and Performing Arts
The curriculum for this group will cover the same skills as other Year 7 groups with the aim of reintegrating the students into specialist classes by Year 8. The content of the curriculum for this group may be thematically organised
2. Learning to learn delivery through all subjects
The delivery of "learning to learn" is based on Building Learning Power and is across all subjects. This was introduced this year through Years 7 and 10 and will roll out across the key stages. The school is using this initiative as the vehicle to review its teaching and learning approaches so that we refresh our collective understanding of what outstanding teaching and learning looks like, and ensure that we are all focused on the type of classroom activities that build the independent, resourceful, enquiring, motivated learners we want our students to be. As such the school is investing heavily in staff development and has appointed two "learning to learn" ASTs and a team of champions across the curriculum.
3. Flexible Days to enhance the curriculum
Flexible Days will take place throughout the school year for all students. These will represent a mix of theme days, visits, sports tournaments, catch up classes and whole days of curriculum time for students. Twelve Flexible Days have been introduced this year in order to further enhance the range of activities that do not easily fit into one hour blocks of time. Flexible Days need to be well planned, organised, staffed and resourced and the learning linked into the whole experience for the student. This innovation will be evaluated at the end of its first year.
4. The school's specialism threading through the whole curriculum
The school has recently been identified by the DCSF as a High Performing Specialist School (HPSS) and is planning to develop a second specialism in Vocational Education as a result. Whilst doing this it gives us the opportunity to review our existing specialism in Media Arts so that the two, plus the introduction of the sixth form provision, fit together as a whole and are incorporated into our BSF planning. We recognise the need to ensure that our specialisms thread through the whole curriculum and inform our teaching and learning.
All curriculum areas should be able to demonstrate how the school's specialisms have been incorporated into their curriculum planning and to keep these aspects f their work under rigorous review
Curriculum Structure
The school operates a two week cycle of 50 periods, 25 periods per week. There are 5 periods per day (3 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon), each of which lasts for one hour, with the exception of Thursdays when they are each 55 minutes and Flexible Days when the timetable is suspended.
At Key Stage 3 students will follow a curriculum comprising:
- English Maths
- Science Technical and Visual Arts
- French PE
- PSHCE RE
- ICT Performing Arts
- Humanities
Learning to Learn ( L2L) is embedded across the curriculum based on Building Learning Power.
From Year 8 some students are able to take both French and German. Some students will complete KS3 in two years in some subjects, whilst others will not begin KS3 until Year 8 after following a one year "access" course.
At Key Stage 4 all students will follow a common core comprising 30 periods:
- English Language and Literature , Maths, Science Core and Additional, PE, RE, PSHCE
Plus option choices of up to 4 subjects, comprising 20 periods where students are guided through a free option choice structure covering a whole range of GCSEs (1 and 2 year courses), vocational options including BTEC, Diploma, and Key Skills, Study Plus for targeted students and a special "New Directions" programme for students in danger of becoming NEET - the curriculum is constructed around students' choices
Curriculum Planning and Schemes of Work
Each curriculum area is required to have long term curriculum plans and medium term plans (schemes of work). These will usually be related to the national curriculum and/or exam board requirements. These should be followed by staff and regularly evaluated and updated. Schemes of work will set out how the course is structured so that students' skills, knowledge and understanding are developed progressively, and how the teaching is organised. These schemes of work should be supported by assessment strategies and monitored to ensure consistency across the team. Teachers will plan individual lessons, or sequences of lessons, from these schemes of work.
Homework
Acton High School recognises the importance and value of homework as an extension of classwork, and as a vehicle to practice skills, acquire new ones and develop good study habits. Homework tasks should be incorporated into long, medium and short term planning. The school has a separate, detailed homework policy.
Future Planning
Our key values of high aspirations and inclusion underpin our curriculum and will continue to do so as it continues to develop in the future. The key drivers that will shape the curriculum as it develops are:
- The development of independent learning skills so that all students can take full advantage of a fully personalised offer
- Full personalisation of the curriculum offer in both KS3 and KS4 enabling more flexible progression through the curriculum rather than an age related one size fits all model
- The development of a 14-19 offer linked to the establishment of sixth form provision on site to increase flexibility and improve transition
- Maximising the potential of elearning to contribute to personalisation and flexibility.
We have well established vocational provision and strong partnerships with Hammersmith and West London College and will be working with them and Twyford High School to pilot the new Creative and Media Diploma. There are plans to increase the number of diploma courses offered on site, and in partnership with others, in coming years.
Functional Skills, already incorporated into the Diploma course, will soon be a requirement for all students as it is linked into GCSEs. We are planning for this and recognise links to the KS3 curriculum changes and learning to learn developments and intend to pilot Functional Skills before they come on line.
Our future plans are to broaden the curriculum further. In particular, we aim to make our MLE a more dynamic interface between home and school and use it as our main strategy for extending access to learning. To support this development we have appointed an AHT with a focus on e-learning, a MLE web manager and a team of ICT champions across subject areas to lead on developing the capacity of staff to make use of ICT.
