The secondary curriculum review
The revision of the key stage 3 programme of study provides an opportunity to review and refresh your sequences of work.
When reviewing planning across the key stage, developing new sequences of work or revising existing ones, you should consider the following.
Planning needs to highlight how the key concepts are integrated into teaching and learning across the key stage. When you review your planning you may find that the opportunities to develop creativity are mainly through writing narratives or poems or through drama-based activities. The key concepts are applicable to the key processes across reading, writing and speaking and listening. For example, you could think about where pupils have opportunities to read creatively by developing their own interpretations, making fresh connections between ideas and words or relating them to their own experience.
When pupils revisit the key processes at different points in the key stage, there needs to be a clear increase in demand to ensure that they continue to be challenged and progress. This could be achieved through pupils using the processes in an expanding range of contexts, including those that are unfamiliar, and applying them to more complex ideas or texts, or using them with increasing independence. Teaching of the key processes should take account of pupils' experiences at key stage 2 to link with and build on their previous learning.
Pupils should be given the chance to speak, listen and write for 'contexts and purposes beyond the classroom'. Activities or sequences of work involving contact with groups, organisations and individuals in the local community would be one way to achieve this. Another way would be through technology such as the internet and web cams, which offer opportunities to engage with audiences internationally.
Pupils should have the chance to participate in activities that specifically address speaking and listening in the programme of study and that increase in demand across the key stage. These activities should be assessed both formally and informally to ensure pupils are given feedback on how to improve and are prepared for the formal assessment of speaking and listening at key stage 4.
The books chosen, and the teaching approaches used, need to increase in demand through the key stage. The criteria for selecting texts in the reading range and content section should be used to ensure that there is progression from the texts encountered at key stage 2 and that the texts are increasingly challenging across the key stage. This will prepare pupils for the texts they will study at key stage 4.
Pupils need to develop a repertoire of techniques and strategies that they are able to draw on and apply to their writing. Planning for writing across the key stage should develop not only pupils' written accuracy but also their ability to adapt these techniques and strategies to a widening range of contexts and purposes with increasing independence.
