LFAQSF Moral Purpose
‘To unlock the potential of all our learners’
Our Curriculum Intent
At Landau Forte our curriculum exists to ensure all students regardless of background and ability have the opportunity to unlock their potential. We are committed to students being challenged from their previous key stage learning experiences. Our broad and balanced curriculum is ambitious, coherently planned and sequenced, and will provide the platform in preparing students with the foundations for examination success.
Our Curriculum Intent has been informed by a wide variety of researchers and is steeped in evidence based research. Christine Counsell summarises the aspiration of our curriculum to empower all learners creating a pathway to success in university, their career and life:
‘A curriculum exists to change the pupil, to give the pupil new power. One acid test for a curriculum is whether it enables even lower attaining or disadvantaged pupils to clamber into the discourse and practices of educated people, so that they gain powers of the powerful.’
As well as excellent academic success we aim to ensure our students leave us as polite and well-rounded young adults. Our new core values of Compassion, Courage and Curiosity are currently being embedded throughout our curriculum offer to ensure we continue to meet our social, emotional, spiritual and moral obligations.
Our Curriculum Framework
Key Stage 3 Threshold Curriculum
Builds on KS2 Primary curriculum. The year 7 – year 9 curriculum provides the foundation for academic success in examinations. The curriculum framework consists of the following;
| Threshold concepts | Threshold concepts define potentially powerful transformative points in the student’s learning experience. They are the ‘jewels in the curriculum’ because they identify key areas that need mastery. Until students ‘get them’, they can struggle to understand a subject. |
| Mastery/ Deep Learning | The route to deep learning and the development of expertise and mastery is to do fewer things in greater depth. Threshold Concepts are mastered through repeated sequencing, that allows the student to apply Threshold Concepts into different contexts. |
| Long term Memory Sequencing & Story telling | Long term memory is the foundation for incorporating and making sense of new knowledge. Material sits in the long term memory when it has been ‘chunked’ into meaningful schemata, stories or concepts. Sequencing Threshold Concepts over the journey of the curriculum helps students to make progress and allows them to apply the Threshold Concepts into different contexts within and across subjects. |
| Challenge | The provision of difficult work that causes students to think deeply and engage in healthy struggle - a high challenge, low risk culture is created. |
| Disciplinary Literacy | To have access to and master deep subject knowledge, students need to be exposed to the cultural capital of language. Tier 2 are general academic words which occur across different subjects, and are essential for reading comprehension. Tier 3 are subject specific words. The richness of vocabulary allows students to enter the academic discipline and address social mobility. |
| Character | The 3 C’s (Compassion, Courage, Curiosity) are the character virtues that are explicitly taught through the curriculum |
Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5
Accredited courses enabling students to be successful in national qualifications and preparing them for life beyond school.
Implementation
Our curriculum intent will be implemented through ‘engaging, enthusing and inspiring every lesson, every day.’ Our teaching and learning cycle, which is underpinned by Rosenshine’s principles of instruction, ensures that the curriculum is delivered effectively so that all students make progress regardless of background and ability.
Impact
The personal and academic potential of our students will have been unlocked, and our students have the opportunity to be successful, and to ultimately have choices in the next stage of their journey.
If you would like more information about the curriculum the Academy follows then please contact us.