Intent of curriculum

Our intent for the curriculum is to provide students with the opportunity to gain, develop and refine some of the key tools that allow them to apply the skills of reading and oracy, across the school curriculum. The curriculum has been structured in a way to remove barriers that may prevent students reaching their potential. The topics provide students with the skills that are transferrable across all subjects, allowing students to implement and refine these skills and strategies throughout Year 7 and beyond. The curriculum will have a strong oracy and reading focus and by using an introduction Oracy unit and whole play, the intent is to help students to improve their oracy, fluency and vocabulary understanding.

Learning to learn aims to provide our students with the necessary key learning skills and inner confidence in their future with regards to raising students’ self-esteem. Resilience, working collaboratively with others, communication and confidence amongst other skills will provide students with the confidence both in and out of the classroom to succeed.

Implementation of curriculum

The curriculum has been designed to allow students to focus on the skills needed to learn, how to reflect on their current strategies and behaviours, and discover how they can learn more effectively, alongside the focus of a key novel in the first term.  The curriculum has been designed to focus upon 3 main units: Oracy, Reading and Performing, and Group work on a wildlife topic. Within these topics, students gain skills for oracy and reading comprehension – they then combine these skills in the final unit. The sessions are designed to get students to observe that they can question themselves with regards to how they learn, and the curriculum guides them to discover new strategies to help them improve their oracy skills. Lessons will be a mixture of teacher led, group work, independent work and IT based. Students will work through booklets that can then used a resource to aid learning throughout their time at school.

The teachers of the curriculum will be delivered by numerous teachers across a wide range of subjects and will change annually.  This works to the benefit of the subject, gaining new perspectives each year on the topics we cover and reflecting on effective ways to deliver these topics is what makes the curriculum engaging. Working collaboratively with several teachers across different subjects allows the curriculum to blend well across all subjects, whilst still maintaining a core reading focus.

The lessons blend with the key learning and reading skills from various subjects and the L2L skills are not taught in isolation but share cross curricular links. Learning to Learning also encapsulates the whole school initiatives within its curriculum including ‘Words Matter’ and ‘Improving Oracy.’ This is evident across both projects. Discussion of key themes in the play also supports the PSHCE content in Year 7.

Impact of curriculum

Learners develop detailed knowledge and skills across the Learning to Learn Curriculum and transfer these skills into all subjects. Students will have their opportunity to reflect on the content they have been taught and review their progress each lesson. Students will take away strategies and key pieces of information that will support them not only during school but will develop their skills ready for the next stage of education, employment, or training.

Oracy – Students will become more fluent in their reading, discussion of ideas and listening to one another. They will gain a clear understanding of the 4 key areas in The Oracy Framework: Physical; Linguistic; Cognitive and Social Emotional. These skills will be transferrable across all subjects and will highlight the importance of both talking and listening in order to effectively understand and discuss what they have learnt.

Reading – Students will develop skills and the confidence to extract information and promote a positive experience for the students when reading. It will give students the inner confidence and desire to read without feeling overwhelmed at the task of reading.

Group work – Students will combine the skills from the oracy and reading units to effectively work together to produce a creative piece of work. The skills of presenting to a class will be utilised to allow students to feel both confident and proud of their work. Students will develop confidence, vocabulary, creative thinking and teamwork skills alongside the oracy and reading elements.

We are confident that the content of the curriculum will provide students with the necessary skills to remove barriers for learning, promote independence and develop key learning skills that can be transferrable into the world of work. We will measure this in several ways:

• Lesson observations
• Student and staff feedback questionnaires
• Collaborating with teachers and HOD to ensure that L2L curriculum is cross curricular.
• Annual review of topics being delivered.