Our Head of School for KS3 has been working with subjects leaders to pull together a map of our curriculum. This idea is to look for links, to plan future links, and, more routinely, keep tabs on what is going on in our students’ learning lives. All too often the detail of the curriculum is not discussed beyond departments and we’re trying to change that; this is where the real action is. The plan presented in his pdf, is the raw rough version before we’ve done anything with it – take a look. It’s just a first draft.
A secondary purpose of the KS3 plan was to map out the units of work that will feature in our termly Excellence Exhibitions – the image above shows Year 7 and 8; the full plan is in the pdf. It looks pretty exciting to me. We’re still discussing how to run these exhibitions; they may need to be Exhibition Weeks which include performance events alongside some static displays. We’ll be trying to maximise the opportunities for students to be present, talking to visitors about their work. One of the issues that’s emerging is the danger that people are introducing inauthentic products simply so they can be exhibited easily – we’ll be discussing this; we need to exhibit authentic products that are produced to a high standard; things that students would normally make/write/produce.
All of this goes in parallel with our Rhetoric Roadmap which is currently being updated for 2016-7.
It’s a work in progress, shared here in that spirit.
teacherhead 
Fantastic.
As a maths teacher interested in sequence plans, I’d love to see examples of the sequence plans for maths(!) and how they interlink over Ks3 and KS4
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That’s a bit beyond my remit. We have a new Head of Maths starting in September – I’ll ask him to share the plans.
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Just a thought… what does the term ‘Upper’ and ‘Lower’ refer to? Who decides who fits in those groups? How do you move from one to the other? Do the lower group always do lower activities?
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It’s very broad. We have sets and that issue is dealt with continually. Based on assessment.
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It’s a good challenge though – one we will discuss.
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I love the idea of the rotating termly exhibition. Simple, but powerful. So much great work is never seen by anyone other than the individual student and teacher. Children learn so much from real, touchable, tangible examples. Adults too! ‘Exhibition’ is often left as the domain of the Arts, so it is great to see this being a truly cross curricular event.
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Do the arts fit in here too? A concern if they don’t?
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Of course. Look at the whole plan, not the image of one section.
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[…] In my previous school we undertook this first-round mapping and it was fascinating. https://teacherhead.com/2016/07/02/emerging-ks3-curriculum-map-and-exhibition-plan/ […]
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