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The Ravensbourne School

Curriculum

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Curriculum

THE RAVENSBOURNE SCHOOL CURRICULUM IS AMBITIOUS, INCLUSIVE AND AIMS TO IGNITE ALL STUDENTS WITH A LIFELONG LOVE OF LEARNING.

Curriculum intent

The Ravensbourne School curriculum is ambitious, inclusive and aims to ignite all students with a lifelong love of learning. Our curriculum is broad, knowledge rich and engaging, underpinned by a set of relevant skills to broaden students’ horizons and ensure the holistic development of all our young people.

Our students are exposed to high level academic and social opportunities that raise their ambition and empower them for success in the real world to prepare students for their future.

Our ambitious curriculum and the personal wellbeing of every child is at the heart of what we do and extends beyond the classroom for our students.

We are committed to increasing the cultural capital of our young people within a community built on the values of Ambition, Integrity and Excellence, that endeavours to achieve strong outcomes for all.

 

Inclusive:

  • Inclusion and Equity are guiding principles for all policies and practices
  • Curriculum and assessment systems are designed to be effective for all learners
  • High-quality support in place for all learners to access a full, broad and balanced curriculum
  • Diversity is celebrated and all non-inclusive, discriminatory and inequitable practices are challenged

 

Focused:

  • Some knowledge is of greater importance and use
  • The most important knowledge for each unit has been carefully considered
  • This most important content is intentionally shared repeatedly with pupils
  • Assessments are created to track students’ progress through this powerful knowledge
  • Responsive teaching results in teachers identifying and repairing gaps in this powerful knowledge

 

Sequenced:

  • Curriculum content is mapped to ensure that pupils meet new content when they are ready for it
  • Curriculum plans ensure that linked content is revisited at regular intervals
  • This provides opportunities to check prior learning
  • Students remember more content because of this spaced practice

 

Coherent:

  • Big Ideas are used to create threads throughout the curriculum (schema)
  • Big Ideas organise knowledge in the minds of students
  • New information is connected to prior learning more easily
  • Pupils can better understand why they are learning new content

At The Ravensbourne School we promise to:

  • Embed a knowledge rich sequential curriculum in all subjects.
  • Identify the most powerful knowledge to teach through big ideas subject knowledge organisers to scaffold and support your child’s learning journey.
  • Embed teaching and learning strategies that ensure that effective learner habits are established that lead to strong outcomes for every student.
  • Offer high quality SEND provision to ensure strong outcomes for our students.
  • Increase the opportunities for literacy across the disciplines, for every child to develop a love of reading.
  • Ensure that all students are exposed to CEIAG and Higher Education opportunities in each year group.
  • Deliver high quality PHSE provision to enable students to make the right personal choices at all stages of life including Relationship and Sex Education.
  • Raise cultural capital across the disciplines including British Values and Spiritual, Moral, Social, Cultural development.
  • Offer a wide range of extracurricular activities to allow our students to excel in both academia and within their own specialist areas outside of the normal classroom.

Our curriculum is sequenced for knowledge to be revisited and built on over time. Through this process of interleaving, the most powerful knowledge is taught and learned by our students. We have created subject knowledge organisers in each subject discipline which is revisited frequently over the Key Stages to develop students long term memory.

  

Our curriculum

 Our Big Ideas fit into our curriculum principle coherent, ensuring our curriculums are built on coherent schema running across the 5 years.  Schemas (sometimes referred to as mental models, scripts, or frames) are structures that organise knowledge in the mind. When learning, the mind connects new information with pre-existing knowledge, skills, and concepts thereby developing existing schemas. 

Our curriculums, develop and refine learners’ prior conceptions as opposed to teaching something entirely new. Approaches that compare, organise, and map concepts try to make schemas clear and visible and are thought to support learners to organise and extend their ideas. The flexible nature of schemas does mean that specific teaching and learning strategies foster a more desirable order to a learner’s pre-existing and developing knowledge.

Our approach to working with schemas focuses on pupils organising and elaborating on their ideas to develop more complex mental structures.  We do this through the development of our subject specific Big Ideas that run through the 5 year curriculum.  The relevant Big Idea is referenced at the start of each lesson through the curriculum slide, to orientate the learners within the curriculum.

In all of our 5 year curriculum plans you can see the Big Ideas outlined, mapped and developed over time.

Big Ideas in EBACC

Subject Curriculum Areas 

Curriculum (ID 1039)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KEY STAGE 3

Broad and Balanced: 

All our students are entitled to a broad curriculum over a 3-year Key Stage 3. The National Curriculum is followed and students study English, Maths, Science, MFL (French or Spanish), History, Geography, Computer Science, Music, Drama, Art, Technology, PE (including Dance), RE and PSHE.

 

Options Process: 

In Year 9, students choose their GCSE options before commencing a 2-year programme of study in Year 10. Not only does this give students the opportunity to study subjects they have enjoyed and excelled in through their broad and balanced KS3 curriculum, but it also crucially gives them more time to develop the depth and knowledge needed to succeed in challenging GCSE qualifications.

 

Lesson length:

Our lessons are 50 minutes long, with some year groups receiving 100-minute lessons for practicals and some key stage 4 and Sixth Form lessons. This allows learners to be fully immersed in the essential knowledge and skills they require to progress in lessons. This allows more time for deliberate practice and greater fluency of practical skills.

 

KEY STAGE 4

In Y10 and 11, our students commence their GCSE or Btec courses. Student’s study 9 GCSEs in total. All students study the statutory requirements of GCSE English Literature, GCSE English Language, GCSE Maths and GCSE Science. Students are then able to select 4 subjects from our broad offer. It is expected that a high proportion of our students will study the full Ebacc qualification of English, Maths, Science, Geography or History and MFL which is open to all.

 

KEY STAGE 5

The curriculum for Post 16 students is designed to cater for as many students as possible who wish to benefit from further study, providing a wide range of appropriate academic and vocational courses, and looking to provide progression from the KS4 curriculum. There is a comprehensive support and guidance system in place for all students.

Find out more

If you have any questions regarding our curriculum, please email                                                                Mrs L Cooper: lcooper@trs.e21c.co.uk