Curriculum Enactment

Curriculum enactment is how we deliver the knowledge and skills we have planned. It is the actual experience that each student receives in the classroom, or from a school related activity. Whilst we are clear that every teacher has the freedom to deliver their curriculum in a way that best meets the needs of their subject and the students that are receiving it, we do insist on two main principles of curriculum enactment.

When enacted, our curriculum will:

maintain high expectations for all students. Quality first teaching, delivering to the top of each of class and adapted for those who require more support.
be delivered through Rosenshines key principles

High expectations:

Our curriculum is specifically planned with integrity to be ambitious and challenging. When delivering their curricula we ask our teachers to teach to the ‘top’ of their classes, and scaffold down so that our learners who need support can access the same curriculum as their peers.

We always expect the highest possible standards from our learners and maintain disruption free classrooms to ensure that all learners have opportunities to do this.

Out of class learning opportunities such as homework, projects and clubs contribute to the curriculum that your child receives so we ask that maximum tenacity is shown in every activity they engage with.

Rosenshein’s Principles:

We utilise Rosenshine’s principles to structure our lessons and enact our curriculum. These Principles of Instruction are widely recognised for their clarity and simplicity, and their potential to support our learners in accessing, understanding and retaining the knowledge and skills that are shared with them. Every lesson or sequence of lessons are structured in a similar way, so our students have clarity about what is expected of them.

Students should anticipate starting each lesson with a piece of retrieval practice often called a ‘Low Stakes Test’. This task whilst varying in its presentation between subjects, focuses on retrieving previously learnt knowledge or practicing previously learnt skills.

Why do we do this? well, evidence shows that retrieval practice is an effective revision technique because it creates stronger memory traces and increases the likelihood that the information will be transferred to the long-term memory. As with all components of our lessons, we have high expectations and expect all students to engage with the retrieval practice, correcting and modifying their answers with green pen (where appropriate).

Lessons will also include portions of teacher instruction, where new ideas, concepts, skills and knowledge are shared with the students. These segments can vary in length and frequency throughout a lesson, but typically include:

sharing and explaining new vocabulary
providing opportunities for developing oracy and discussion
providing opportunities to guide students through new skills and knowledge
modelling and demonstrating new skills or knowledge.
large volumes of ‘cold called’ questions where teachers can check for understanding and address any misconceptions.

Lessons will include segments of guided practice, where teachers model and walk through the application of knowledge and skills. This typically includes elements of ‘I do -You do’. We then expect that lessons include a significant portion of deliberate practice, where students practice the new skills they have gained. The individual elements of the lesson will be interspersed with frequent checks for understanding. Teacher instruction, guided practice and deliberate practice may be repeated multiple times within a lesson.

Supporting our SEND and disadvantaged students

When enacting their curriculum we expect staff to always consider how they will support the disadvantaged and SEND students in their classrooms. In essence we know that if we get it right for these children we will be getting it right for all our students.

In addition to any student specific adaptations which are required we ask that staff:

deliver new material and knowledge in manageable chunks
explain new vocabulary and develop opportunities for oracy
use formative assessment strategies to ensure that all students in the class have understood a new concept before moving on.
provide high quality examples and modelled answers, guiding the students through what is expected.
provide scaffolding that is then reduced and removed over time.
narrate the student’s journey through the curriculum, making explicit links to prior and future learning opportunities.
provide supported opportunities for students to develop their reading and writing within their subjects.
Offer significant opportunities for students to practice the skills and apply the knowledge they have learnt.