Improving the Curriculum

Now that year 11 have finished, schools across the country will be thinking about how they can evaluate and improve their curricula. Here are some questions, suggestions and prompts that might be helpful. You can download the whole thing as a word document at the end of the blog

Section 1: Reading and Vocabulary

Do units teach and present vocabulary to improve student responses?

  1. All forms of word
  2. Example sentences
  3. definition

Wherever possible, information should be delivered via extended reading

  1. How are you increasing the amount of reading students undertake in class?
  2. Which units are currently lacking in extended reading?

Possible evidence of a poor curriculum:

  • Overreliance on videos
  • Overreliance on bullet points
  • Overreliance on powerpoint (constant slide change can be a problem)
  • Overreliance on discussion
  • Unnecessary/distracting visual imagery
  • Information split across different pages/different text boxes

Possible evidence of good curriculum:

  • Booklets/Printed Text/Textbooks
  • Reading materials with line numbers for efficiency
  • Diagrams that act as important supports for complex texts

Section 2: Sequencing and Content

How does your curriculum focus on high-utility content?

  • Examples of things that can be taught in one unit that can be used across other units: this could be knowledge or skills

You might consider the following things….

  1. What skills or knowledge are most useful (in that they allow students to do the most stuff in your subject) and how do you ensure they master it and apply it to the maximal range of relevant contexts?
  2. Can you show me examples of stuff student learn in KS3 that they will rely upon in KS4 for success
  3. Can you show me examples of how you ensure that this knowledge is retained and applied beyond the point of when it was first taught?

The systematic use of worked examples with minimally different tasks for students to attempt is an efficient way for novices to learn: do all units contain these?

You might consider the following things…

  1. Explain why your worked examples/models are useful
  • Transferable components?
  • Level of quality that is achievable by students?
  • Consistent structuring/teaching approach?
  • Labels and prompts?
  1. Show me examples of example problem pairs in your curriculum
  • Minimally different problem/task to the model?
  1. Show me examples of half completed models (We stage) used as scaffolds
  2. Show me examples of how models of performance become increasingly complex as students progress through units

How does each year build upon the preceding year?

You might consider the following things…

  1. Why this unit here?
  2. How does unit X help with unit Y?
  3. Show me examples of students using stuff from previous units in this unit

How do you ensure that the components of final problem solving/composition/extended writing/performance are taught, mastered and gradually integrated into complex performances?

Components are individual skills/knowledge that are taught in isolation first before being combined together in wider, final performances. These could be sentence styles, mathematical steps, historical skills, specific movements in dance, data manipulation, brush strokes, chord progressions, scientific calculations etc.

Gradually integrated refers to this process:

  1. Teach and practise first specific component until mastered
  2. Teach and practise second specific component until mastered
  3. Ask students to do both components together
  4. etc

Questions to ask:

  1. What are the component skills of this performance?
  2. How do you get students to master the components?
  • Show me examples of massed practice of individual components to build fluency
  • Show me examples of how you can do instant corrective feedback in initial teaching to prevent errors
  • Show me how you integrate components (TAR guided practice/success criteria)

Explain how challenge increases as a student gets older

Questions to ask:

  1. Why is unit yr 9 harder than yr 8?
  • Higher element interactivity of problems (more individual bits to hold in mind when completing them: wider knowledge needed/more steps in operation
  • Higher level of abstraction in content: theoretical? Symbolic? No real world/concrete equivalent? 
  • Themes, ideas and content require wider background knowledge to understand: dense texts/ideas with a high frequency of subject specific/big words.
  • Greater performance demands: more writing/doing
  • More complex terminology

How does it provide extensive practice, moving from guided to independent practice and building fluency for students?

You might consider the following things…

  1. Show me examples of massed practice of important knowledge/skills to ensure initial acquisition/accuracy
  2. Show me examples of guided practice that allows all students to succeed
  • Completion problems/half models to finish
  • Consistent, predictable task formats
  • Opportunities for teacher to ask students to co-construct output
  • Scaffolding that helps success
  • Instant corrections to prevent errors being learned
  • T.A.R. (Tell/Ask/Remind) Prompts, hints, supports
  1. Show me examples of effective independent practice
  • Varied practice that covers the full range of possible application
  • Consistent, predictable task formats
  • Distributed practice that continues past the point of high success rates in performance(overlearning)
  • Distributed practice that means that important knowledge and skills ‘do not go away’ e.g. practice stuff from unit X in unit Y (recap lesson? Homework? Section of lesson used?)

Section 3: Homework, Assessment and Evaluation

What do students struggle with and how are you fixing that?

You might consider the following things…

  1. How do you draw out misconceptions and address them explicitly?
  1. Show me where your curriculum spends extended time on important but tricky stuff
  2. How do you teach your team to teach the tricky bits more effectively?

How confident are you that pupils remember what they are taught and what is your evidence for this?

  1. How systematic are you with retrieval practice?
  • Centrally planned do nows?
  • Regular cumulative quizzes?
  • Cumulative assessments?
  • Sufficient coverage of content in retrieval activities?
  • How are you tracking that all important content is being practised across time?
  1. Do you test if students actually memorise their KO stuff and how do you do this?

What is the role of the Knowledge Organiser in your lessons?

You might consider the following things…

  1. Show me an example of a KO and explain why you have chosen that content
  2. Show me tasks in your curriculum that ask about KO content

How do you know that your homework is useful and sufficiently challenging? What is the rationale behind it?

You might consider the following things…

  1. What are the hand in rates for student hw?
  2. Show me some KS4 hw and explain why it is challenging/useful?
  • Independent practice of content learned in lessons?
  • Additional reading with text dependent questions?
  • Effective online platform?

When looking at KS4 work, what can you deduce that students need more of in KS3 to better prepare them for GCSE?

How does assessment help inform you about curriculum evaluation and student learning?

Explain how you have used a set of assessments to make changes to curriculum and what changes did you make?

  • GCSE QLA
  • KS4 exams
  • KS3 assessments
Curriculum EvaluationDownload

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