A KS3 Curriculum To Support Transition

A version of this blog post was first published in Transition Talks Issue #4 and with kind permission is now being re-published here.

When it comes to year 6 to year 7 transition there are many aspects to consider. Often it is the practical aspects – the ins and outs of the school day, the systems and routines - that become the focus. Essentially these are the things that make up induction, rather than a true, effective transition.

After acknowledging that pupils who came bounding into secondary school bright-eyed and full of wonder in September can become jaded and lacking enthusiasm by July, we, at the all-through academy I worked at, decided to go for the jugular, positing that curriculum could be at the heart of the issue. Afterall, once a child has got to grips with how to get their lunch, where to go for PE, and what to do to avoid detention, the curriculum is what they spend their most time on. We decided that to make our secondary phase more primary child-ready, we would first and foremost focus on ensuring that the curriculum was right.

The benefit of being an all-through school meant that we could see the difference in attitude between our primary-aged pupils, even those in year 6, and that of our secondary pupils. Although that is a generalisation – not all year 6s are brimming over with excitement, and not all secondary pupils are disengaged – we could see, from years of observation, that our primary phase might contain some answers for the questions arising in the secondary phase. Our goal was to begin to try to keep that spark alive for our year 6s as they went through the double doors to secondary. Our year 6s were joined by others from around 30 other feeder schools so the challenge was also to keep the flame burning for children who were moving to a completely new school.

I was asked to lead on the reinvention of the KS3 curriculum, and was given a decent amount of free rein, at least in my initial proposals. It was decided that we would look at the curriculum model that was being implemented in the primary phase in order to identify key features which might be replicated with children in years 7 and 8.

Before I continue, I must introduce a caveat: what follows is a description of our work based on our primary curriculum. That primary curriculum was certainly by no means the only curriculum model present in primary schools. If, after this, I have convinced you that adopting a more primary-like approach to a KS3 curriculum is the way forward for you and your school, you will need to look into the primary curriculum in your feeder primary schools in order to identify key features that might be replicated.

Briefly then, let’s look at the key features of our primary curriculum, using our work as a case study for how the year 7 and 8 curriculum might take its cues from how children have been taught previous to their move to secondary school. Our primary curriculum was characterised by:

• Cross-curricular units of work which bring together relevant learning from a range of subjects, without links being tenuous

• Units of work developed from key areas and objectives from the geography, history and science curriculum

• Units led by an overarching question with sub-questions to guide content

• Key concepts taught and revisited within and across year groups and within and across subjects (see Clare Sealy’s work on the 3D Curriculum)

• Agreed and established key facts and vocabulary for each unit of work

• Linked fiction and non-fiction texts

• Carefully mapped and documented unit overviews which ensure curriculum coverage and consistency

• A deliberate sequence of learning that allows children to build on previous knowledge, creating schema

  
  

I settled upon presenting three exemplar units of work that could be taught in years 7 or 8 which demonstrated how a secondary curriculum could be planned and taught in a similar way to our primary curriculum. Being very familiar with the above key features of our primary curriculum, having spent a couple of years both writing the curriculum for our brand new year 5 and 6 cohorts and redeveloping the existing curriculum for years 1 to 4, I set about familiarising myself with the KS3 National Curriculum document.

Particularly, I was looking for signs of content that could be drawn together to create robust units of work that didn’t compromise on the content that would need to be taught. I knew that in meeting with the Directors of Learning for the various subjects I would have to convince them that their subject wasn’t going to be disadvantaged by some sort of watered-down, flimsy curriculum. The links made needed to be strong and relevant.

I presented the following three unit overviews:

The above unit diagrams were designed to show the potential of link-making in the secondary curriculum and depended on further development by subject experts. In presenting them I acknowledged the limits of my own specialist subject knowledge, having done only an art degree, having not touched geography since A-Level or history since GCSE, being an abject failure when it comes to Science and being a musician in the loosest sense of the term.

The next job was to work together to map out 6 units-worth of linked learning which we did as a team, eventually coming up with something that all subject leaders were happy with. By this point we had decided that in order to get the science coverage right, science would continue to be a standalone subject alongside other subjects such as maths. We were left with creating a curriculum that sought to make links between history, geography, English, art and DT (PSHCE followed later and content was organised by a new DoL for the subject retrospectively). After a lot of collaborative work, we settled on the following unit overviews:

Subject leaders then spent time mapping out their content into the units, looking, where appropriate, to make links to the over-arching question and the key concept (underlined in each question). Subject leaders for English, geography, history and art all managed to make strong and relevant links whilst ensuring that the content they needed to teach was present and well-sequenced. In addition to this, we tried to ensure that the curriculum was demanding, taking into account the fact that our primary children had covered some mature themes and didn’t need to be babied. As I outlined in my blog post ‘Three Characteristics of a Supportive KS3 Curriculum’, a key stage 3 curriculum should be aspirational and supported in this by logistics.

The first years of implementation were disrupted by school closure, remote learning and other restrictions, and, as such, we weren't able to do as much as I’d have liked by way of evaluation before I left the school to become a consultant. However, what I did see was encouraging.

Lessons were well-sequenced, packed with high-level content and children were responsible for learning skills that build on those learned in primary. The year 7s proved themselves to be able to discuss sensitive issues in grown-up ways and there appears to be a retained thirst for learning. It was evident too that teachers of different subjects know what is being taught in other subjects more as they reference prior learning not only from their own subject, but from others. As a result, children seemed to have been able to follow a thread of learning, meaning that they don’t have to switch completely into thinking about something else from lesson to lesson.

If you'd like some bespoke help with developing how you do primary to secondary school transition, here's your 3-step plan:

1. Drop me an email

2. Have a phone call with me to talk about your school

3. We'll work together to empower you and your staff to enhance teaching and to enrich your pupils' lives