Following the announcement today I’ve been thinking about changes we may have to make to our scheme of work. The overriding opinion on twitter is that a 3 year key stage 4 is the way many schools will go, and I’m starting to agree so want to capture my thoughts to come back to at some point, when we have more information from the exam boards. There is no guarantee that we’ll go this route , as there is still lots to consider – its also not my decision to make – BUT if we are to start this, for the first students to be examined with the new GCSE in 2017, we need to have a new SOW in place from September 2014 … and we all know how quick each academic year passes.

To be honest to some extent we already blur the lines between KS3 and KS4 as our scheme of work as students follow 1 of 5 different routes dependent on their target grades and teachers opinion of their potential, with students dropping in and out of intervention groups (taught by Seager!) as is necessary – up until now it is these students that have been entered early but obviously that option has now gone, but (we think) we are going to keep this as our modus operandi – at least for the time being. Students are assessed regularly and can move between routes – we’ve designed each pathway (there are pathways that make up the whole 3 year plan) to be “helical” in that most of the topics are taught in every pathway, but each one covers it to varying extents so moving up a set isn’t an issue as the students won’t have massive knowledge gaps.

SOW

Our schemes of work are all on our VLE and each of the pathways is a separate webpage, with a document “hanging off” it that details the topic and the suggested depth to be covered (along with all the usual gumph that goes with a SOW – I haven’t shown an example of this) – on the webpages, is also an overview and  tabbed folders that include links and the intention is that we can add resources we develop so that we can share stuff within the department that works for specific topics.

Pathway 5

Moving forward I am thinking that the principle of having pathways will remain, and within each one the subheadings will be based on the governments GCSE objectives of:

  • Number – structure & calculations
  • Number – Fractions, decimals & percentages
  • Number – measures & accuracy
  • Algebra – notation & manipulation
  • Algebra – Graphs
  • Algebra – Solving equations and inequalities
  • Ratio/Proportion & rates of change
  • Geometry/Measure – Properties & constructions
  • Geometry/Measure – Mensuration & calculations
  • Probability
  • Statistics.

Obviously I wouldn’t want to teach all the number “bits” together, so will probably want to move them around a bit and each pathway would include elements of each subheading – trying to keep the same type of topic each one covers but to differing levels of difficulty.

Needs some major work … but just my random thoughts for future reference … so Mel … remember that you’ve done this to come back to later!!