Curriculum
At Tamworth Enterprise College we believe that every child should gain the knowledge, skills and character to live a remarkable life, that includes positive relationships, resilience and financial independence.
Curriculum Overview
Our curriculum is aligned with the National Curriculum. This year we have added Ark Curriculum Plus programmes of study to maths, science, geography and (in Jan '24) English. Details of Ark at the bottom of the page.
Tamworth Enterprise College is committed to providing a curriculum that is broad, balanced, challenging and fosters a love of learning. We match our curriculum to the abilities, interests and aspirations of our students, to give every child the opportunity to strive for personal excellence. We are an academy that aims to open doors for every pupil, and we therefore value the contribution that creative and practical learning brings to a child’s development alongside the traditional subjects.
Our hope is that every child who leaves Tamworth Enterprise College has the qualifications, skills, knowledge and character to access aspirational Post-16 opportunities and to lead a remarkable life that includes positive relationships, resilience and financial independence.
KNOWING & REMEMBERING MORE
SEQUENCING
CULTURAL CAPITAL
FLUENCY OF KEY SKILLS
The TEC Curriculum:
Our approach to learning at Tamworth Enterprise College is built around the intent statement at the top of this page. In designing the curriculum we consider the 4 key concerns above. Of course they are all interlinked and interdependent, this document aims to address how they underpin our TEC curriculum.
Fluency:
At KS3 we follow the AET KS3 Curriculum Map. Within our increasingly global and technologically driven world, the ability of our young people to become champions of flexibility and the unfamiliar is crucial. As a result, our trust values and mastery teaching model are at the core of our drive to prepare young people for the modern world.
Our mastery approach maps out the learning journey of a learning objective. The desired outcome of the learning journey is mastery. We define mastery as 'Fluency with the Unfamiliar'.
Key Skills:
The AET KS3 Curriculum Map is based on closing the skills and content gap between the end of Key Stage 2 and the start of the GCSE specification.
Sequencing:
Content has been divided into schemas. A schema is a skills thread that builds from EYFS to Year 11; it maps the age-related expectations for each big idea in each subject. Note: A schema is NOT necessarily linear. The knowledge will build connections with previous learning. It will not necessarily build upon it vertically. Each year group will develop mastery of the appropriate age-related content of all the schemas.
Each year group will have AREs that are linked to the schema
AREs will be taught within a UNIT through sequences of learning
Times shown for each unit are approximate and relate to MINIMUM required learning time.
Knowledge rich learning:
Knowledge is reinforced within lessons by mandatory Do Now tasks which allow for prior learning to be cemented and regular opportunities for information retrieval. Knowledge organisers are a feature of every subject and regular ‘low-stakes’ quizzes constantly ensure that the knowledge is embedded within memory without over burdening the working memory needed to approach each lesson.
Cultural Capital:
The social mobility of our students is vital if we are to allow TEC students ‘to lead a remarkable life that includes positive relationships, resilience and financial independence.’ Our curriculum aims to expose students to the writers, thinkers, performers and creators that will inform their own thinking and learning as they journey beyond secondary school.
The content of each unit should include exposure to a wide range of sources and texts, exposing students to the best minds our civilisation has produced.
Throughout this learning journey, students will have the opportunity to: read and respond to texts; write a wide range of texts; and participate in speaking and listening activities.
Ark Curriculum plus
This year at TEC we have introduced Ark Curriculum Plus in Maths, Science and Geography- with English due to launch in January 2024. The Ark Curriculum Plus is a recognised path to excellence that sees our Y7 students working through a challenging and wide breadth mastery curricular.
Ark state that the programmes have been proven to:
have a positive impact on pupil progress and attainment
deepen pupils’ understanding of key concepts
engage pupils and increase their enjoyment of lessons
make more impactful use of teacher time
drive change and improve teaching
You can access the learning journey for our students following the Ark Curriculum Plus programmes below:
The Principles
Bruner’s work around multi-representation is delivered through Concrete - Visual - Abstract representations to make sense of abstractions.
Skemp’s relational understanding helps pupils to see links between a) the representations and b) different topics to enable pupils to make connections by ‘joining the dots’ to identify and understand the concept.
The MFM is a process that encourages metacognition, enabling pupils to ‘know what they know’ as they progress through the model. Thereby moving the focus from individual learning styles to an evidence based process for all learners.
At the heart of the model is thinking. The model provides pupils with the environment and the opportunities to engage in different types of thinking to support memory.
We represent concepts until is makes sense. Representation is about finding a way for pupils to understand, regardless of their confidence or rate in grasping new concepts.
Develop knowledge and facts through practice and then guide pupils through less familiar questions that promote different types of thinking through the application of that knowledge. Questions at Probing and beyond, focus on the awareness and application of those facts, through the development of skills in a wide variety of context.
Pupils can move information from working memory to the long term memory through (a) extended practice (Fluency, coming back to learning in Further Extension, repeat learning in starters and cycle learning in schemes), (b) teachers introducing new learning within an environment of relational understanding and multi-representations.
