Curriculum intent
ON Track Education Wisbech is an independent school which caters for children with a variety of complex needs, including:
· Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
· Autism
· Behavioural needs
· Social, emotional and mental health needs (SEMH).
The intent of our curriculum is to equip all pupils with the life skills, knowledge and strategies they need to be life-long learners and well-rounded individuals. Our hope for our students is that they develop into contributing members of the community who can enjoy happy, fulfilled and successful futures. The THRIVE approach underpins all of our practice from the planning and delivery of lessons to our learning cycle.
We offer a safe, stimulating learning environment where our curriculum is designed around the individual needs of our students. We enable them to experience academic success whilst building resilience and a positive attitude towards learning opportunities.
Our Curriculum:
· Meets the needs of children with a wide range of aptitudes and abilities.
· Is broad and balanced.
· Includes an emphasis on Life Skills and Basic Skills and Emotional literacy.
· Includes methods and approaches that meet the needs of each individual child.
· Supports the outcomes described in each child’s Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
Our curriculum model aims to:
· Maximise each pupil’s engagement.
· Provide motivating and relevant learning and developmental opportunities.
· Adopt a personalised approach that allows staff to plan in response to a pupil’s individual needs and interests and take into account their barriers to learning.
· Use a combination of Life Skills, Basic Skills and emotional literacy to ensure that pupils are well prepared for the next phase of their journey.
· Lay the foundations for pupils to have a meaningful and independent adult life and are well-placed to make a positive contribution to life beyond school.
· Base learning opportunities on real-life experiences in engaging, cross-curricular, innovative, and stimulating and inspiring ways.
· Promote pupils to engage, participate and try hard.
· Provide children with the foundations for learning so that they can achieve and progress at their own pace.
Curriculum planning should:
· Be highly focused on communication and interaction through a language rich environment and well-planned play, continuous provision and learning activities
· Provide opportunities to generalise skills across a range of contexts.
· Aim to develop our pupils by providing well-planned, trans-disciplinary sessions that maximise engagement, achievement and progress
· Use outdoor learning experiences so that children learn within real world contexts
· Use educational visits or external visitors to motivate and engage learners.
Assessment should be accurate, precise and used to clearly identify:
· Attainment and progress of Life Skills, Basic Skills, emotional literacy and subject specific learning
· Pupils’ stages of development and learning
· Appropriate next steps that allow pupils to access meaningful, appropriate and well-differentiated learning opportunities.
Subject Specific Learning
All subject specific learning is based on The National Curriculum. Subject specific learning is important, but we believe that the Life Skills and the Basic Skills that our pupils need to be successful life-long learners is more important. For this reason, we emphasise Life Skills across the whole school day and Basic Skills are practiced in every lesson. Subject specific learning is targeted in lessons as appropriate to the theme and needs of each child.
Life skills |
Basic skills |
Emotional literacy |
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Behaviours for Learning: · Engage in learning opportunities and maximise progress and achievement. · Follow basic rules and expectations by using a consistent and positive approach to attitudes and behaviour. · Develop self-esteem and confidence across all areas of learning. · Develop each child’s resilience and thinking skills. To achieve and succeed with a ‘can do’ attitude that reduces barriers to learning. |
Basic Skills are derived from the Unesco report of 2006. These skills are the building blocks for, and underpin, successful future learning. They are transferable and need to be practiced in a range of contexts, environments and situations. All our pupils require many opportunities every day to develop their basic skills in a range of learning opportunities that are appropriate for their needs, abilities and rates of progress. |
Thrive approach: Thrive is a systematic approach to the early identification of emotional developmental need in children and young people, enabling provision to be put in place quickly and responsively. |
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Communication: · Learn effectively and interact appropriately. · Increase their ability to speak, listen and understand. · Increase their receptive, expressive and pragmatic language skills. Develop appropriate social communication. |
Numeracy: The ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide. More broadly, it means the knowledge and skills required to effectively manage and respond to mathematical demands posed by diverse situations. involving objects, pictures, numbers, symbols, formulas, diagrams, maps, graphs, tables and text. Encompassing the ability to order and sort, count, estimate, compute, measure, and follow a model, it involves responding to information about mathematical ideas that may be represented in a range of ways. |
Communication: Students learn to recognise themselves and their needs. They are coached to use alternative language to express themselves. This enables students to feel empowered and confident to articulate themselves. |
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Personal independence: · Develop life skills including self-care and personal organisation within the scope of their needs and abilities · Understand personal safety and how to stay safe in a range of environments · Access formal and informal learning opportunities as independently as possible. |
Literacy: The ability of an individual to read and write with understanding a simple short statement related to his/her everyday life. Furthermore, The concept of literacy encompasses multiple skill domains, each conceived on a scale of different mastery levels and serving different purposes. |
Personal independence: Students are given the tools to identify and respond to their own emotions in a controlled and regulated way. |
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Relationships and social skills: · Develop play skills and effective social communication with peers and adults within the scope of their needs and ability · Understand the basic foundations of positive relationships, including how to form and maintain friendships Understand appropriate social behaviour. |
Understanding my world/creativity and imagination: · Art · Food Technology · Science · Humanities · Technology / Computing · Dance |
Relationships and social skills: By supporting the children to understand themselves and their own drivers, we provide the building blocks to understand the motivations of others in our surroundings. This enhances their emotional literacy and directly contributes to the development of resilience, resourcefulness, reflective capacity and reciprocity.
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