Curriculum Overview
Our intent
At King Edward VI School, Lichfield we want everyone to develop to their full potential; it is our job to enable students to leave us as confident, life-long learners who have a strong sense of responsibility for themselves and for others. Our students are to become global citizens who are able to thrive and play an active part in creating a society based on tolerance, sustainability and enthusiasm.
The curriculum at King Edward VI School, Lichfield has been designed to be an ambitious curriculum; challenging students and building on the knowledge and skills gained previously and focusing on the best that has been thought and said. The curriculum is designed as a sequence through the Key Stages.
This curriculum will produce young people with lively, enquiring minds, provide leadership opportunities and promote high self-esteem.
Implementation
In the classroom, best practice includes questioning students to check for understanding and building towards independent practice; using modelling to encourage students to think through a process and to use worked examples; retrieval practice (spaced and inter-leaved) formative and summative assessment. Staff ensure that learning is stored in long-term memory to ensure that our students know more and remember more.
Embedding literacy
Communication in both written and spoken forms is key to our intent for the curriculum. Students are encouraged to read around the subject to develop a love of reading and are provided with access to the Library Resource Centre to support reading widely and often. Staff model good practice in literacy, supporting students to access a range of written texts in the classroom and the promotion of wider reading. Staff encourage students to communicate both verbally and in writing using ‘disciplinary literacy’. A high focus is placed on acquiring subject specific vocabulary so that students can think and express themselves academically. In addition, students are supported to become digitally literate, with subject specific lessons, alongside cross-curricular access to ICT.
Encouraging independence
Our aim is to create conscientious learners who are intrinsically motivated and accountable for their own learning and development. The curriculum allows for the repetition of skills and knowledge in different contexts to embed these in long-term memory. Students are supported to build good learning habits that they can transfer to different areas of the curriculum and beyond, including practise, revision and reflection, providing students with transferable lifelong skills. The school code of conduct: ‘Ready, Respect, Strive’ encourages this positive, proactive approach to learning.
Enrichment
Across the school, students are given the opportunity to consider the curriculum ‘beyond the classroom’. This includes access to a wide range of visits, opportunities to engage with employers and other education providers and activities such as competitions, theatre visits and opportunities to develop cultural capital. In addition, speakers visit the school to speak to groups of students in order to show how learning in school is translated to the world beyond school.
