Our Curriculum Intent
Ark Evelyn Grace aims to “empower our students to be the voice of their future”. This means providing our students with a nurturing environment, a high-quality curriculum and a wide range of experiences so that they have genuine choice over the direction of their lives. We believe that there is no limit- with hard work, optimism and perseverance- to what our young people can achieve. We believe in our children, our community and our future and we prepare our students to lead it.
The Core Principles of Our Curriculum
Our curriculum is implemented according to 5 key principles.
1. Coherent and Powerful Content
Our students learn powerful content that is well-planned, coherently sequenced and connected. The curriculum focuses on core knowledge that students need to know and remember in the long-term and is revisited through regular testing and re-teach. Content is “chunked”, with challenge increasing as students progress through a lesson or unit of work, ensuring students build and deepen understanding.
2. Child-Centred
Our curriculum is diverse and inclusive of all. Ensuring our students are both supported and challenged is key. We intentionally monitor the work of all students but especially those with SEND to ensure that all students thrive. Specific scaffolds are provided to students who need additional support and stretch tasks for those who need additional challenge.
3. Communication
Reading, writing and oracy is prioritised with student talk a dominant feature of the classroom. Whole school approaches to reading see vocabulary being explicitly taught and purposeful, accountable reading with regular checks for understanding. We encourage out students to be “loud and proud” in the classroom, speaking to be heard so that students learn from one another.
4. Checking for Understanding
We believe in our community. It sits at the heart of our culture compass (the values of the school). Because we believe in our community, we believe that every child must be known so we focus on 100% and no opting out. We know that without intentional whole class checks for understanding students can be unseen. We believe in making learning visible with whole class checks for understanding, cold-calling and regular feedback. We see errors as opportunities to learn and intentionally develop a culture of error in the classroom.
5. Consistent Routines
We believe that young people thrive when they have consistency. We also believe in high expectations and nurturing our students’ ambitions. We therefore have consistent routines (called “The Fundamentals”) and ways of teaching so that our students know what to expect in every classroom.
