Curriculum overview

The overarching aim of Ark Academy is to provide all our students with the best possible opportunities to lead a successful, fulfilled life. We are a values-based school which aims to build a community of civic pride and social justice. We want all our young people to be able to access higher education or a career of their choice, and to contribute fully to our democratic society. Our school is built on six pillars of Ark Schools, which are present in all aspects of our practice, setting our vision and driving day to day decision making. The six pillars are explored in the DNA of Ark Academy.

Our curriculum is designed to offer all of our pupils, from the highest attaining, to those who require special consideration, every opportunity to fully develop their knowledge, skills and understanding of a broad and varied curriculum through balanced and equitable exposure, ensuring they are developed into well-rounded, articulate and educated young citizens of the world ready to take on the next stage of their education at university, suitable apprenticeships or to go directly into the world of work at 18.

Our curriculum is ever-evolving. It has been designed over a period of time by our passionate and enthusiastic professionals and it continues to be adapted and improved. Through this, we aim to provide a curriculum that is engaging, balanced and rigorous. The guiding principles that drive our curriculum are:

• A deliberately designed curriculum: Our curriculum has been carefully planned and sequenced, as we understand that knowledge and skills do not exist in isolation. The curriculum ensures that pupils are taught knowledge and skills in an order that allows them to make useful connections to prior learning and to embed key concepts into their long-term memory.
• Academically ambitious: All pupils master firm foundations in English and mathematics and this underpins excellence in the other subjects. Our reading, writing and maths programmes bring challenge and rigour, and ensure that pupils go to secondary school with very strong foundations of academic achievement.
• Equitability for all pupils: We believe that all pupils have the right to access a full, high-quality curriculum. They should all have the opportunity to learn a rich body of knowledge and acquire key skills across the full range of subjects to ensure that they secure a full cultural and academic understanding to succeed in life.
• Knowledge is power: We believe that learning and processing many discrete items of knowledge over time enables pupils to build a knowledge base in which they can more successfully think critically, be creative, or solve new problems. Our curriculum aims to ensure pupils use knowledge learned to make inferences, decisions and form opinions of their own.
• Reading at the core: We know that reading enables pupils to fully access and immerse themselves in the whole curriculum. Pupils learning to read by the end of their primary journey is a non-negotiable at Ark Academy. Reading is a skill we believe should be transferred between all curriculum subjects.

Implementation

Great teaching is the biggest lever to ensuring equitability for all pupils and the school relentlessly focuses on the quality of teaching provided to the pupils. When implementing our curriculum, the quality of the teacher’s practice is therefore of the most fundamental importance, as the curriculum can only be as strong as it is delivered in class.  Our strategies to develop teaching and learning are designed to enable pupils to participate, think and remember more as a result of the quality of the teaching they receive. To drive these strategies, the school prioritises teacher development through coaching and co-planning.

Co-planning

We recognise that carefully planned lessons are key to ensuring that pupils learn well. Also, that the skills to do this effectively are continuously learned through experience and over time. Therefore, in addition to ensuring that year group partners plan together, our school leaders co-plan weekly with all year groups to ensure that purposeful conversations take place around lesson content and sequencing. Teachers capture this on their half termly medium-term plans which are designed to probe teachers to think about the sequencing of learning in all subjects and consider how new learning will be transferred to pupils’ long -term memories and retained over time.

Coaching

Senior and middle leaders act as mentors for our teachers, developing their practice and ability to implement the curriculum to a high standard. These mentoring sessions allow teachers to become proficient in their practice and are targeted to specific areas of development according to the individual teacher’s needs, thus enabling our planned curriculum to be the curriculum that is delivered.

Subject leaders 

Subject leaders are passionate about their subjects and actively drive standards in the school. They play a full role in the monitoring and development of their subjects, supported by senior leaders and their wider subject networks. Subject leaders have a high level of ownership of the intent and progression of their curriculum and are able to make gradual changes over time based on the knowledge of their subject in the school. We know that it takes time to become an expert in a subject and we invest time and training into ensuring our subject leads can confidently lead their subjects across the school. 

Lesson structure 

Our multi-part lessons are designed so that each segment of learning builds upon the previous to advance more complex learning by the end of the lesson. Regular rounds of reading, writing and discussion are built into lessons. These small steps of ‘deliberate practice’ allow pupils to learn the curriculum in manageable segments. The multi-part lesson also allows for teachers to assess pupil understanding at multiple check points throughout the lesson. This enables teachers to provide effective and timely feedback to pupils as well as the opportunity to re-shape and adapt the lesson according to the learners’ needs.

Responsive assessment 

Throughout EYFS, teacher assessments are carried out and responded to termly, while in KS1 and KS2, pupils sit standardised assessments which are responded to through a termly cycle of pupil progress meetings. Teachers check for understanding in lessons and this information is used to shape future learning. Pupils are given opportunities to take quizzes, fill in knowledge mats, complete exit tickets and answer ‘big questions’ at the end of each unit which allows teachers to see if pupils have successfully learned what was intended and respond appropriately.

Intent

Careful thought is put into our curriculum design with subject experts leading and developing the curriculum in their area of expertise. We work with colleagues in the Ark network to ensure the curriculum is developed into a comprehensive and rigorous intellectual journey that allows pupils to achieve outstanding results and make exceptional progress. This is achieved through engaging and thought-provoking provision that aims inspire a passion for the subject and a love of learning.

The guiding principles that drive our curriculum design are as wide and varied as they are important:

• Our curriculum is underpinned by the core belief that knowledge is power. A driving factor of our curriculum is the importance of ensuring that our pupils become both culturally literate and that they are exposed to and can remember a breadth and depth of knowledge through subjects that enable them to take a full and meaningful part in society. This is as important as the outcomes of their exams. Powerful knowledge allows our pupils to create change, which is expressed at Ark Academy in the permeating ethos of Civitas.We aim to give our pupils the ability to bring about positive change by building knowledge that allows them to articulate and understand complex social issues and to engage with challenging debates about the barriers to change.Our knowledge rich curriculum allows all of our pupils to engage with this deep and powerful knowledge across all subjects and disciplines and all key stages.
• Our curriculum is academically ambitious: engaging and rigorous. We aim to create moments of awe and wonder that emerge from the clarity of understanding: the why as opposed to just the how. Why is it important that our Year 7 can understand and articulate the events that led to the creation of the Magna Carta? Why is it important to understand the chemical significance of buffer solutions to explain the role of the oceans in climate change for Year 12? Such questions underpin the design of our curriculum offer for all pupils.
• Our curriculum is ever evolving. We co-plan and review our plans. Collaborative curriculum planning and reviewing these plans is built into our staff timetables and permeates our department cultures. Our schemes of work have been designed and refined over ten years by skilled subject practitioners and are based on strong subject knowledge. Our twice-weekly co-planning meetings ensure that medium term plans are translated into well-structured and carefully sequenced lessons. This ensures that key knowledge and key misconceptions are pinpointed and addressed deliberately; that teachers can intellectually prepare for their specific classes and students; and that core learning is embedded consistently, ensuring that all students can access an intellectually ambitious curriculum.The use of Fertile Questions designed by subject experts to hinge learning in real and meaningful situations engages students through big-picture thinking and well-pitched challenge. These lesson sequences, carefully blend substantive and disciplinary knowledge allows us to create a curriculum that explains the why as well as the what.
• We recognise the importance of reading and the place of high quality texts at the core of our curriculum implementation. We place a high emphasis on advancing our pupils’ reading age where needed, maintaining progression of literacy levels and pushing our pupils to read academically challenging texts that advance their confidence and knowledge.
• The deliberate design and sequence of the curriculum allows our pupils to commit knowledge to long-term memory through a curriculum that builds on prior knowledge and revisits at levels of greater complexity. Through co-planning and review, our teachers engage in a constant dialogue about sequencing and implementation, particularly where review has exposed knowledge gaps or necessary adaptations due to lost learning time.

Implementation

Curriculum Implementation at Ark Academy is delivered through high quality middle leadership, supported by rigorous senior line management.

In additions to those strategies outlined in our Curriculum Intentions (subject and curriculum expertise, and a well sequenced curriculum), our leadership (senior and middle) use a number of high level strategies to implement the curriculum including –

1. Excellent resources and materials for each scheme of work and lessons. These are honed through co-planning and then adapted as per the needs of the class. A number of departments use documents such as Knowledge Organisers, and base texts, as foundational for the pupils’ knowledge and skills acquisition in each scheme of work.
2. Well designed formative and summative assessment, used thoroughly to inform responsive teaching. Most departments have established diagnostic testing as core to their teaching, and use these tests to inform ongoing teaching. Teachers follow department level Marking and Feedback Policies which outline the purpose, frequency and nature of ongoing marking and feedback. Teachers reflect on summative assessments through Pupil Outcome Reflections, termly conversations with colleagues to identify pupils’ misconceptions and next steps. Teachers follow up summative assessments with a Review Week of lessons. The Review Week enables teachers to address misconceptions apparent in summative assessments, and strengthen pupils’ knowledge and skills in light of assessments.
3. Effective classroom practice in all lessons, summarised in our Everyday Excellence approach to teaching and learning, summarised below. This pedagogical approach follows a Plan, Mark, Teach structure.
4. High quality mentoring and training for all teachers, in particular Early Careers Teachers (ECTs) in the first three years of their careers. Every trainee has their own mentor and a robust training programme. Ark Teacher Trainees (ATTs) and ECTs follow an Ark Central led training programme which is rigorous and highly supportive. All ATT and ECT mentors receive rigorous mentoring training provided by the Academy and the Ark Central ECT programme, using established mentoring practice, guided by the effective and well researched pedagogical handbook Getting Better Faster (Santoyo, 2016). ECT+1 year teachers (ECT+1s) also have their own mentor and in-house training programme which develops ECT+1s’ classroom leadership, and supports these teachers to make the next steps in their careers.

What does an Ark Academy Secondary lesson look like?

First and foremost, an Ark Academy lesson is shaped by the curriculum and subject expertise of the teacher, and the department. Our lesson design is flexible and departments are encouraged to develop the most effective ways to teach their subjects and implement their curriculum intentions.

There are, however, a number of common pedagogical features to our lessons, informed by the best research into what works. Lessons begin with a Do Now, typically a tool for consolidating memory of knowledge, and usually with brief self assessment. Teacher exposition then outlines the new learning, and how it fits into the curriculum (they why), this exposition is chunked with opportunities for questioning and checking pupils’ understanding – this section of the lesson is known as the “activation phrase”. This phrase is typically supported by high quality modelling of what is expected of the pupils. Lessons then include independent practice (the “demonstration phrase”), with a suitable level of challenge for the pupils, and teachers circulating the classroom, intentionally monitoring, for pupils’ understanding and providing targeted support. Pupils are supported according to the needs of the moment, as well as according to teacher knowledge of every child, which is informed by the use of a data rich seating plan, and the teacher’s most recent feedback and marking of the pupils’ work.

Lessons are accessible to all pupils, including those with SEND, who teachers plan to support. Teaching is built on a foundation of intellectual preparation – preparation both of the content and how best to teach it to the particular class. Lessons include opportunities for reading and oracy, which we recognise as vital to our pupils’ progress in every sense, and are characterised by a strong climate for learning, in which every child is supported to learn and low level disruption is eliminated. Pupils’ knowledge and understanding, and strong independent learning habits, are consolidated through a whole school, systematic approach to homework, in which quality and submission of homework is monitored by departmental and pastoral teams, and support provided for pupils where needed through interventions such as Homework Club.

We regularly assess pupils’ academic potential and progress. We place importance on accurate and thorough assessment so that we know exactly what has been learnt and what has to be revisited or re-taught. Wherever possible, students are placed in relevant groups with appropriate challenge and support.
 
Formative assessments take place in lesson each half term and key cumulative assessments take place before the end of every term. End of year summative exams take place once the external GCSE and A Level examinations have finished. Parents are informed of their child’s progress after each termly assessment point which of course includes the end of year results. After each assessment point, we have a full Review Week. During review lessons, teachers and pupils explore exactly what steps need to be taken to move each child to the next level of success.