Hello colleague
It’s good to be in touch with some resources we hope you might find helpful this month. As ever, the focus is on what makes the biggest difference to pupils’ thinking, not more work.
KS3: The Ambitious Years
The intellectual powerhouse of the secondary school
Too often, KS3 is treated as a warm-up.
It isn’t, it’s where habits of thinking are formed, where confidence either grows or quietly diminishes.
One of the ways we can shift this is to take a look at what pupils are doing in primary and see how expectations can shift. I wrote about one department who did this here.
It’s helpful to have an overview of the subjects across the phases and we’ve created the 5 steps across the curriculum for each subject.
Download the 5 steps here
Literacy that lasts in primary
If you’d like to explore how reading can strengthen thinking across the curriculum, you can watch the webinar with me and Abbie Ing here.
We focus on using rich texts to support literacy in the foundation subjects – not as an add-on, but as the work itself.
If you’re looking for a curriculum that does more of the thinking for you, without lowering the level of challenge:
Explore The Teachers’ Collection here
If you’d like to see what this looks like in practice first, view free examples here
Developing literacy for pupils with additional needs
Sometimes the hardest part of developing inclusive literacy practice is knowing where to start.
Teach Us Too have created a free Inclusive Literacy Toolkit to support teachers and schools to: and you can access here.
GEC Homes is the Global Equality Collective’s research programme focused on parent and carer voice in education. And the GEC parent survey is open, an important window into how families are experiencing education. Do share with your parents and carers, link here.
Rory File and the ILT team are supporting the National Year of Reading with their Pedagogy Perspectives series. Explore the series here
Climate Wise Schools
You can now apply for the next cohort of Climate Wise Schools from CAPE (Climate Adapted Pathways in Education)
Over 70 school leaders have already taken part, building the knowledge and leadership needed to lead high-quality climate education.
This is serious work, thoughtful, complex, and the schools that have already taken part say that it is some of the best CPD they have had. For more information, here’s the contact.
Myatt & Co - The 3 Big question this term: inclusion and the curriculum
These examples show how schools and educators respond to national policy shifts by adapting ideas to their own communities and pupils.
- First, watch ‘The oracy shift’ (1 hour 10 mins), to explore how to embed a strong oracy culture.
- Next, watch ‘Using books across the curriculum’ (1 hour 8 mins), to consider how ambitious texts and rich pedagogies can raise expectations for all pupils and build a love of learning.
- Then, watch ‘Muslim diversity and improving religious literacy in the RE classroom’ (1 hour 7 mins), to reflect on how the curriculum can promote understanding, challenge stereotypes, and foster compassion across communities.
- Finally, watch ‘Life chance school’ (1 hour 5 mins) to see how a school designs a curriculum rooted in equity and care for vulnerable learners, balancing national priorities with local needs.
If you’re thinking about the next steps to develop your curriculum
For secondary:
KS3: The Ambitious Years, start with the self-evaluation toolkit here
For primary:
The Teachers’ Collection - explore the research here.
Both are designed to do the same thing:
to raise the level of thinking while reducing unnecessary workload
If this is already on your radar, keep going, and if it isn’t, now is a good time to start.
If you think there’s someone who would appreciate this update, you can forward it on.
Until next time
Mary