Curriculum Intent

The Promise School provides education for primary and secondary-aged students who have Education and Health Care Plans related to their Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs.  The drive towards high quality teaching and effective learning is at the heart of what we do at The Promise School; and only the very best examples of teaching and learning will achieve our aims.

Aims and objectives:

• Rigour - Ensure that consistent and effective teaching and learning is delivered across the curriculum.
• Progression - Provide a framework for teachers to ensure that the curriculum is accessible to all students, meets their needs and challenges them.
• Ambitious - Ensure that students are developed to become confident, life-long learners both in and out of the classroom.
• Personalisation - Identify barriers to learning and provide individualised interventions that accelerate progress for students.
• Builds knowledge and cultural capital - Develop academic and social skills that will create well-rounded students connected to the world beyond their current experience.

Through our teaching we aim to:

• Provide an environment conducive to challenge and learning for every student in the school.
• Identify every students’ range of needs and provide for these needs both in the classroom and outside.
• Assess students’ needs periodically and have a constant dialogue about progress.
• Work with parents, carers and invested partners to support learning.
• Develop students’ self-esteem and self-image, to enable them to succeed both in and outside of school.

A typical lesson at The Promise School contains the following elements:

• An engaging start!  

The best lessons will begin with an activity that settles and engages our students all at once.  This activity may be delivered through use of a picture, video or paper-based task that gets our students ready for the subject at hand.  Activities may be varied and personalised, in order to lower our students’ emotional barriers to learning.  These barriers are often subject and complexity based. When lessons involve complex learning demands, teachers are often even more flexible, engaging, warm, yet maintain boundaries.

Teachers will use the start of the lesson to revisit previously taught matter.  This may be sequential and link to another piece of learning from either the previous day, or from a different part of the learning year.  Opportunities for recall and longer-term retrieval present themselves here.

• A focused introduction to a new aspect of learning.

The classroom teacher will usually segue into the next phase of the lesson where the students, in a fixed seating plan or requested arrangement where appropriate, will be exposed to a new piece of information or skill.  The introduction to new learning may be through a demonstration, a multimedia tool, or a piece of reading.

• Dialogue and questioning.

The best lessons at The Promise School are co-constructivist, in that they invite students to be a part of a dialogue about the content and process of their learning.  Teachers, teaching assistants and students converse about the nature of the task presented, explore solutions that work per group and child, and volunteer opinions on what they learn and how.  

Teachers continually check for comprehension and recap key knowledge by using a range of questioning techniques (for example, Bloom’s Taxonomy or Socratic Questioning).  Questioning is used to motivate, engage, and support students to develop schema, make links between ideas and identify knowledge gaps and misconceptions.  Adults will also make active judgements about next learning steps based on their assessment of learning.

• An element of application.

Students are encouraged to apply their newly acquired knowledge, or more sophisticated skills, to a task that seems to be just that right amount of challenging.  Staff guide and encourage participation in these ‘cornerstone’ tasks that will often form the basis for retrieval/recall in the next lesson or phase of learning.  Staff may also use these development tasks to point out cross-curricular or real-world links.

• Implicit and explicit adaptation.

The most typical lessons at our school acknowledge that our children are capable of deriving joy from learning; but that each may need a different level of support to eventually find learning intrinsically useful.  Lesson resources, conversations and delivery are adapted accordingly.  Teachers will adapt lessons based upon students’ needs; and additionally, cater lessons to our students’ preoccupations and preferences where possible.  This may either be visible in the choice of content or the way in which content is delivered.

• Relationships.

The best lessons at our school will overwhelmingly plan, vary, and consolidate learning based on the strength of relationships between the adults and students in that room.  A new teacher and/or teaching assistant combination may incorporate moments where new boundaries and relationship building are modelled.  A teacher may stop academic teaching to point out moments of SEMH learning.  Staff may have to make decisions about the tone, content and language of their humour if used, and use humour to anchor students so that they are receptive to learning.  Warmth and boundaries make for some of the best lessons at The Promise School, and we model this process consistently throughout our teaching day.

Implementation - The Promise School Lesson Model

At The Promise School, we use a four-part learning model to ensure consistency for our students and staff.

Connect:

The connection phase acts as the bridge between previous learning and what the focus will be for the lesson.  It encourages all students to engage and settle them into the learning environment.  Connect activities should encourage thinking and retrieval of previous knowledge.  This can take the form of quizzes, matching activities, a ‘Big Question’, etc.  Teachers will share the learning intention for the lesson and connect it to the big picture of what they are learning.

Activate:

The activation phase introduces new knowledge, ideas, and skills.  The learning is led by the teacher and is done through representations (diagrams, manipulatives, pictures), discussions, and worked examples.  Teachers use formative assessment to ensure students' learning and pick out misconceptions.  Once teachers have established that students are ready to move on, they will move into the next phase of learning.

Demonstrate:

In the demonstrate phase of the lesson our aim is to ensure all students can apply and demonstrate their new knowledge, ideas, and skills.  Here we provide students with adapted tasks that follow Bloom's Taxonomy (Do, Think, Explain, Solve) to encourage students to deepen their knowledge and understanding.  This part of the lesson will have the students working independently or in small groups, with the support and guidance of the staff.

Consolidate:

The fourth phase is consolidation.  This is the final point in which the students and teachers can ensure that learning has taken place.  Teachers may recap the key points of the lesson through the students taking part in questioning, short quizzes, or group discussions to highlight the learning that has taken place.  Teachers will also identify misconceptions, discern the need for deeper understanding and gauge the engagement of the students with the learning.  This will help inform planning for the next lesson.

Impact & Assessment

The impact of our curriculum is reflected in each year groups’ assessment outcomes, and the presentation and effort shown in student workbooks.  Our students will be supported to achieve the best possible outcomes.   

Students will have the required knowledge and skills to make informed decisions about their next steps in education or training and will have been equipped to use this knowledge to secure the required outcomes for their chosen pathway.  

We also monitor attendance and outcomes in enrichment activities and will track our student destinations after they leave us in Year 11.

The Curriculum at The Promise School

At The Promise School, we strive to achieve a balance between variety and suitability when it comes to the curriculum we offer our students.  We want to ensure they have a strong chance of success, but we also need to be cognisant of their social, emotional, and mental health needs.