Builds on KS2 Primary curriculum. The KS3 curriculum provides the foundations for academic success in examinations. The curriculum framework consists of the following:
Threshold concepts | Threshold concepts define potentially powerful transformative points in the student’s learning experience. They are the ‘jewels in the curriculum’ because they identify key areas that need mastery. Until students ‘get them’, they can struggle to understand a subject. |
Mastery/ Deep Learning | The route to deep learning and the development of expertise and mastery is to do fewer things in greater depth. Threshold Concepts are mastered through repeated sequencing, that allows the student to apply Threshold Concepts into different contexts. |
Long term Memory – sequencing – story telling | Long term memory is the foundation for incorporating and making sense of new knowledge. Material sits in the long term memory when it has been ‘chunked’ into meaningful schemata, stories or concepts. Sequencing Threshold Concepts over the journey of the curriculum helps students to make progress and allows them to apply the Threshold Concepts into different contexts within and across subjects. |
Challenge | The provision of difficult work that causes students to think deeply and engage in healthy struggle – a high challenge, low risk culture is created. |
Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary | To have access to and master deep subject knowledge, students need to be exposed to the cultural capital of language. Tier 2 are general academic words which occur across different subjects, and are essential for reading comprehension. Tier 3 are subject specific words. The richness of vocabulary allows students to enter the academic discipline and address social mobility. |
Character | The Windsor Academy Trust ASPIRE character framework identifies fourteen character virtues that are explicitly taught through the curriculum |
Phase One (approx. 1-9 weeks) | Phase Two (approx. 1 week) | Phase Three (approx. 2 weeks) | ||
Teach – Embed – Assess | > | Performance stock take | > | Review and re-do |
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