Intent

 

We ensure that all students at Tor Bridge High access an ambitious, broad and knowledge rich curriculum which will open doors for all and maximise their life chances to go on to progress into ambitious and exciting careers and futures ‘without limit’.

Our curriculum is led by, collaborated on and delivered by high-quality specialists who ensure that all students, regardless of starting point, social background or SEND provision are challenged to think hard, work hard and learn effectively. Each subject team have carefully and deliberately ‘selected’ and ‘sequenced’ learning to ensure knowledge and skills are ‘secured.’

 

The curriculum is designed for students to remember in detail: to be stored in our students’ long- term memories so that they can later build on it forming ever wider and deeper schema. As a result, a good knowledge- rich curriculum embraces learning from cognitive science about memory, forgetting and the power of retrieval practice. Intelligent sequencing of the curriculum builds on what has come before and prepares for what comes after. This careful and meticulous consideration of what our students learn and in what order provides them with the richest narrative possible for our students.

​

At the heart of our curriculum lies deep respect and passion for the subjects that we teach. We ensure that students are not only equipped with the powerful knowledge that they need to understand intelligently the world around them, but we also teach students how to think, how to critically evaluate and how to be an active and responsible citizen in society in the context of the rich knowledge each subject provides.

​

We have a three-year Key Stage 3 curriculum and a two-year Key Stage 4 curriculum with the expectation that our students will continue their curriculum into the sixth form at Post 16. Each subject area curriculum has been designed to ensure that knowledge builds on prior links to learning and links sequentially to the next stage in their learning. In this way, subject areas have a spiral curriculum with key concepts and thresholds which are sequenced logically and coherently to ensure students know more, remember more, and apply this knowledge to each skill within a subject area using ambitious vocabulary. 

The academic year is divided into three cycles of twelve weeks. Each cycle comprises ten teaching weeks, during which students cover new topics in preparation for examinations and assessments. 

The eleventh week is an assessment week when all students in Years 7-13 complete tests and other assessments in every subject to analyse their strengths and identify areas for further development.  The twelfth week is where students will be given bespoke feedback during ‘super teach’ week. 

​

Within the subject areas of Science, Religious Studies, Geography and Health and well-being, all KS3 students will access a booklet curriculum that assures excellence in the substance of what is taught to every single child. The intended curriculum is consistently enacted in lessons allowing a fuss free approach to teaching and learning that reduces the cognitive overload for all students

 

Implementation

 

Our Teaching and Learning policy have intertwined the key strands for improvement for highest leverage changes in the classroom, with first quality teaching to support all, but particularly SEND students and Disadvantaged Learners.  Our vehicle for change and improvement is Incremental Coaching with action steps that each teacher embeds, as a habit, to improve outcomes for all. 

​

This will ensure that we:

Have high levels of engagement within every classroom. 

Increase levels of participation through expert and frequent questioning tools.

Improve literacy skills.

Ensure effective explanations so that all students can know more, remember more and do more

​

The curriculum for each year group (7-13) can be accessed by clicking on the separate tab for each subject. The curriculum for each subject outlines the knowledge and skills for each term, as you can see from the subject road maps for each year group. 

Formal written assessments, also known as end-point plans, are undertaken during each Cycle and are skilfully, and appropriately, mapped back from Year 11-7. Parents currently receive three progress reports for each subject each year after each summative assessment point. Assessment is used expertly to track the progress of all students and to: rapidly understand the starting points of all students; identify gaps in learning as a result of the pandemic; ensure that pupils embed key knowledge and skills throughout all stages of the curriculum.

​

Whilst our teachers explore the meaning of subject-specific language and plan for challenging reading and writing with scaffolding for all students to achieve ambitious outcomes. we also have a guided reading tutorial programme in Years 7-13 where students take part in teacher led reading where they actively track the text and explore a range of fiction and non-fiction that explores the world around them, from classics to contemporary fiction.