Our ambitious and knowledge rich curriculum provides students with a dynamic journey of learning, supporting them in their progress from novice to expert. 

Big Idea - What impact does our curriculum have on our students? How does it support the development of expertise, knowledge, progress, attainment and destinations?
 

At the heart of our approach is Responsive Teaching. This is where teachers use live formative information to respond to the learning needs of their students, making professional judgements on the knowledge acquired, the subsequent retrieval required and application of this knowledge into a contextual framework. They use this information to respond, adapt their pedagogy accordingly and think deeply about the lessons they teach.

Responsive Teachers:

• Respond to the needs of the students at the point of delivery, 
• Respond to what granular, low-stakes but frequent information on what learning, understanding and remembering tells us,
• Have a diverse toolkit that allows for adaptations in pedagogy, skillful and insightful retrieval, recap and recall,
• Have a deep understanding of the subject they teach- powerful knowledge being at the heart of this
• Are committed to creating a culture of planning for our own students, making decisions about adaptation/diversions within the curriculum

Responsive Teaching ties together our Curriculum Intent, Implementation and Impact. It allows:

• our intended curriculum to be enacted, 
• us to continually develop and refine our implementation of the intended curriculum, our pedagogy.
• us to measure the effectiveness of the curriculum and the impact it is having on our students- our understanding of both formative and summative forms of assessment.

Most importantly, it is cyclical, it allows us to constantly:

• refine and develop our practice, subject knowledge, pedagogical subject knowledge, 
• refine and develop the knowledge of our students, their connections with current and previous knowledge, 
• make predictions and foreshadow future learning
• give the the correct feedback at the right time
• evaluate the impact on our students, what they know, remember and are able to do 
• RTP (Responsive Teacher Points)- assessments that are formative and relevant
• The way we assess our students knowledge and understanding:
• A move to regular, low-stakes assessment 

Raw marks are collected and reported as snapshots of cumulative learning and acquisition of knowledge through:

• Use of MCQ, 
• Knowledge Drops, 
• Generative Learning activities such as learning by mapping, summarising
• Responsive Teaching Points (RTPs) are the name for these low-stakes assessments
• Synoptic RTPs assess a broader domain and provide a higher mark, more summative judgement on students learning through the curriculum
• GCSE questions are used at KS4 as well as mock examinations- these are not used at KS3. 

The systems we use to assess:

• A bespoke Management Information System (MIS)
• Results from RTP are recorded live in lessons.
• Data points become a process for administration not teachers
• No additional data entry- teachers only need to input:  effort, behaviour and homework. Progress calculations are automated in MIS

How we view progress:

• Students are placed in rank order based on KS2 Combined Scaled Scores then placed in bands with their peers of similar ability
• Progress is measured in terms of how well students are performing against their ability peers
• We use % to measure progress for teachers, students and parents
   

Diagnostic Assessment Tools to Support Teaching - Responsive Teaching Mechanisms - ‘The 3 R’s’

Alongside the diagnostic assessments undertaken to understand the students in our academy as mentioned above, diagnostic approaches in the classroom provide opportunities to reflect on students' thinking, strengths, and weaknesses. They can give useful insights into learning and provide us with an assessment not assumption approach. Through our approaches to Responsive Teaching and its 3 mechanisms: RTM (Responsive Teacher Markbook), RTP (Responsive Teaching Points), RDD (Responsive Data Days), we can effectively diagnose and indicate areas for development with individual students or across classes and year groups. Through this approach we can isolate the specific misconceptions, errors and gaps students might hold and respond accordingly. Through progressive, specific and forensic approaches to assessment and dedicated protected directed time, we can diagnose student needs at the point of delivery and plan for approaches to address these.

RDD (Responsive Data Days)

Designed as a way to use the information we are gathering, both formally through RTPs and more informally through the constant use of our RTMs, in a way which supports students, their knowledge and progression, in the most impactful way. Twilight and INSET are calendared for the academic year, the focus of this directed time is dedicated to individual responses to RTPs and Responsive Teaching, allowing time to make professional judgements on what the RTP information is telling us, what adaptations, reteach, recap, student intervention is needed and most importantly, time solely dedicated to plan for this.The academic year has been broken into RT cycles, each lasting a term. Within each cycle, an RDD is scheduled half termly, allowing the time to adapt and respond to what the data is telling us. This is not just formal data but also using the knowledge of the classes we teach. Each RDD has a focus; throughout the year all Year groups will be looked at. 

Information and Data - During RDDs, a range of datasets is used: RTPs- looking particularly at the relative progress students are making, information recorded in our Responsive Teacher Markbooks (RTMs) during lessons, summative assessments such as mocks, students books and homework. This will allow us to plan forward with our RTMs, and think deeply about what each student needs in order to make maximum progress.  All student books, RTMs, SchoolsPlus RTP data, curriculum maps and collaboratively written curriculum lessons are all used to make professional judgements about the adaptations and responses needed for each class.