Our Curriculum Intent

At Armthorpe Academy, the curriculum has been designed to ensure that our vision of ‘excellence’ is realised in our environment, and within our classrooms, consistently. Teaching and learning lie at the very heart of everything we do, and we have high expectations of all our students, and therefore also of the curriculum provision.

The Trust mission of Excellence and Equity with Integrity is incorporated into all curriculum planning ensuring all we do has a focus on helping the students to reach and exceed their potential; through the provision of opportunities, partnerships and the collaboration between the Trust, community, teachers and pupils so that our culture remains inclusive and everyone feels valued; academically, socially and emotionally. Progress is planned for at every level and the clear sequencing of the development of knowledge and key skills is shared with every student in every subject through the use and reference to their subject-specific learning.

We believe that

• Every student has the right to a high-quality education, no matter their starting points and/or educational and social needs.

• A commitment to a love of life-long learning should be aimed upon for all students in our Academy

• Every classroom should be one filled with learning, where students can build on their knowledge of topics in subjects, and opportunities are provided to extend this learning outside of the classroom

• Learning is a mutually celebrated experience, where pupils are given praise and rewards for exceptional performance and where they can also learn and build from their mistakes

• Opportunities should be planned for so that students should be sufficiently stretched and challenged in lessons to ensure that they fulfil their potential and can compete with the very best students both regionally and nationally

• Students should be given opportunities to develop their independence and resilience so that they become confident learners who can draw on a wide range of skills and strategies to problem-solve both within classrooms and in the wider community

• Classroom environments should reflect our core academic ethos so that students receive the same high quality learning experience across the breadth of the curriculum using our learning cycle, SOLAR, to effectively plan for progress in every lesson

• Classrooms should be ‘literacy-rich’ to develop and support students’ literacy skills

• Numeracy, SMSC, STEM are all developed and embedded across the curriculum, making appropriate connections to life in the real world in order for students to see the relevance to their learning.

Our curriculum is matched to the abilities, interests and aspirations of our students. The well-sequenced lessons and students’ abilities to learn are underpinned by the partnerships in the school allowing teachers to build on prior knowledge and allowing the students to fully connect past learning to new knowledge.

Our curriculum will focus on students’ development by providing exciting and challenging learning and extra-curricular opportunities and experiences. By working together we aim to develop links between different subjects and to support and develop literacy and numeracy skills.

Student development and cultural awareness is at the core of all curriculum decisions made by providing exciting and challenging learning and cross-curricular opportunities and experiences. We believe that our intent will ensure that all Armthorpe Academy students uphold their ‘professional learner’ status and will become the responsible and respectful members of society as they make their way into the community.

 Links to the National Curriculum

Subject specific educational research (such as York University: Best Evidence Science Teaching) and the National Curriculum aims were the starting point for each subject to ensure curriculum journeys are diverse yet ambitious.  In many subjects, to drive ambition for all, curriculum plans surpass the requirements of the National Curriculum (NC).  Subject curricula ‘snakes’ at Armthorpe provide a visual graphic to demonstrate how National Curriculum aims are interleaved throughout the five-year journey.  For example, in English the NC states “a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, including in particular whole books, short stories, poems and plays with a wide coverage of genres, historical periods, forms and authors”.   The English learning journey shows this diversity with: high quality prose, poetry and drama from pre-1914; high quality contemporary prose, poetry and drama; two plays by Shakespeare; seminal world literature; and studying at least two authors in depth each year.  However, concurrently writing expectations are also progressively interleaved to build knowledge.  As an example. transactional writing is visited three times throughout Year 7 in different units and then again in Year 8 using a progressive thematic approach.

Equity

Both equality and equity are built into our new curriculum to ensure ambition for all.

To ensure equality, all students in KS3 access the same broad and balanced curriculum in terms of curricular and subject content.  For example, in English all students study the same texts, which in Year 7 begins with a Dickens’ novel, Oliver Twist.  Despite a reading age of 15 plus, SEND learners still study this text as it is important students are exposed to the wider themes of the novel to support holistic understanding.  Equity is achieved by recognising that progress is maximised when each learner is given learning opportunities appropriate to their current learning needs – well-targeted challenges that may not be the same for all students. This means a flexible approach in terms of time, delivery and resources used.  In essence, equity is about staff knowing individual learners and providing the appropriate level of challenge and support to ensure progress from starting points is equitable.  Expectation and challenge are two areas that we are targeting across the school.  In Key Stage 4, equality is achieved through our options process.  All students have the same entitlement in terms of curriculum choice.  Academic ability is not a barrier to choice of subject.  Again, equity is achieved through effective wave one teaching, by ensuring students are taught in a way that means they know and remember more

Our Offer

Our curriculum focuses on the development of the whole child and can be broadly split into the four categories: The Academic and Examined curriculum; Growing Up in 21^st Century Britain; Student Health and Well-Being; Cultural Capital and Enrichment.

Our daily timetable is split into five 55 minute lessons, 30 minutes reading/intervention and 20 minutes values time.  In KS3, to provide a broad and balanced offer, all students study 13 different subject disciplines.  

To implement our intended aims, we recognise our curriculum needs to be fluid and continually reviewed.  Our academy is constantly evolving; numbers on roll are increasing each year and we have an ever-changing social demography of students transferring to the school.  As such, our curriculum is designed to allow us to plan learning experiences that can be made bespoke to the context and requirements of our learners. 

To find out more about the curriculum at Armthorpe Academy, please contact Miss S Hanquinioux (sarah.hanquinioux@consilium-at.com)

 

5 Year Learning Journeys

Subject curricular have been designed to ensure that skills and content are sequenced and interleaved throughout the five-year journey.  A spiralled model means learning is progressive and frequently revisited to facilitate retention in the long-term memory that can be retrieved, applied and further developed. 

Three specific examples are detailed below from Science, French and Art to demonstrate the trust's approach.

The science curriculum is built around 15 big ideas.  The 15 big ideas are sequenced and interleaved, within and across disciplines, so that, over time, students acquire a breadth and depth of substantive and disciplinary knowledge.  Ideas are revisited throughout the five-year curriculum with increasing demand.  For example, the big idea, “The Cellular Basis of Life”, is first taught in Year 7 half-term one, in which students learn the substantive knowledge that living organisms are made of cells which are living and therefore require nutrition.  This big idea is then revisited in Y7 half-term two, with a greater demand, in which students learn that cells are organised into tissues, organs and organ systems, which allow the organism to obtain nutrition required for cells.  This big idea is revisited a further seven times across the five year curriculum with increasing demand.  Disciplinary knowledge is also sequenced and interleaved.  For example, in Year 7 half-term one students learn the definition of accuracy and in Year 7 half-term two, students learn how to assess the accuracy of a set of data.  Accuracy is revisited a further nine times across the five-year curriculum with increasing demand. 

In French, grammar progresses logically and with many opportunities to revisit and use in different contexts across different topics of interest to young people. As we use a spiral curriculum, students will engage with core language and develop it over time. For example, using the verb avoir (to have). In year 7 module 1 students will be introduced to the first and second person singular j’ai (I have) and tu as (you have) to talk about age. In module 2 they build on this by describing people using the third person, il a and elle a (he has and she has). In module 3 they learn to use il y a (there is) and to understand how this is really ‘it there has’. Module 4 sees the full paradigm being presented so they can use nous avons, vous avez, ils ont, elles ont (we have, you all have and they have.) In year 8 module 2 students will use the knowledge of avoir from year 7 to make the perfect past tense so they can say things such as j’ai visité (I visited). Year 8 module 3 also gives students the opportunity to use avoir in transactional situations such as restaurants, using vous-avez ? (do you have?) as a question. The perfect tense is revisited in module 6, literature, and then in year 9 in module 1 where students understand and produce an extended film review and module 5 where students will use the perfect tense alongside others. Students will use the perfect tense more independently in year 9 module 6 where they debate and write about an environmental issue and then across all topic areas in years 10 and 11. Additionally in KS4 students will learn to use the subjunctive of avoir when discussing doubts.

In art, every skill taught in our curriculum is revisited and built upon multiple times throughout the five-year journey.  One example of this is the technical proficiency of painting.  The “Insects” project in Year 7 initially introduces students to colour theory, which is then further developed later in the year in the “Scapes” project when students focus on layering colour and depth. The students then use acrylic paint during their “Food Sculpture” project in Year 8 to re-create the work of Joel Penkman- a photo realistic painter.  In Year 9 the “Natural Forms” builds skills further by concentrating on close up skills and also increasing students’ proficiency of creating layered landscapes during the “Our surroundings” project.  These skills develop further into KS4 through advanced colour theory and painting skills, such as portraiture painting,  in the Year 10 “Fundamentals” project.  Each project has a gradual focus on our students becoming increasingly independent in their use of the formal elements, practical skill and their metacognitive skills. 

Learning journeys and curricular intent for each subject can be found in our Subjects We Offer page.