The Recovery Curriculum

 

Purpose

The Recovery Curriculum is built on the 5 Levers, as a systematic, relationships-based approach to reigniting the flame of learning in each child. Many children will return to school disengaged. School may seem irrelevant after a long period of isolation, living with a background of silent fear, always wondering if the day will come when the silence speaks and your life is changed forever. Our quest, our mission as educators, should be to journey with that child through a process of re-engagement, which leads them back to their rightful status as a fully engaged, authentic learner.

Levers of recovery

 

Lever 1: Relationships – we can’t expect our students to return joyfully, and many of the relationships that were thriving, may need to be invested in and restored. We need to plan for this to happen, not assume that it will. Reach out to greet them, use the relationships we build to cushion the discomfort of returning.

 

Lever 2: Community – we must recognise that curriculum will have been based in the community for a long period of time. We need to listen to what has happened in this time, understand the needs of our community and engage them in the transitioning of learning back into school.

 

Lever 3: Transparent Curriculum – all of our students will feel like they have lost time in learning and we must show them how we are addressing these gaps, consulting and co-constructing with our students to heal this sense of loss.

 

Lever 4: Metacognition – in different environments, students will have been learning in different ways. It is vital that we make the skills for learning in a school environment explicit to our students to reskill and rebuild their confidence as learners.

 

Lever 5: Space – to be, to rediscover self, and to find their voice on learning in this issue. It is only natural that we all work at an incredible pace to make sure this group of learners are not disadvantaged against their peers, providing opportunity and exploration alongside the intensity of our expectations.

Evaluate the curriculum content missed or taught remotely

Class teachers have looked back on what would have been covered in school while pupils were learning from home. They have prioritised what has been missed or not understood. 

Decide what to reteach and what to let go

For all aspects of the curriculum that were missed teachers decide whether to:

1. Edit curriculum content down so it can be recapped in a few weeks, or

2. Not recap this content (or only touch on it lightly)

 

We have divided our curriculum into:

1. Non-negotiable key concepts, knowledge and skills all pupils need to understand

2. Deeper concepts and knowledge you'd like pupils to learn if there's time (i.e. if you master the key concepts quicker than expected)

3. Details that are a bonus for pupils to learn, but aren't necessary for a good level of understanding (if pupils master 1 and 2 in the time you have, you can dip into these)

You'll have to make trade-offs and tough decisions. Use the principles and questions below to help you make the best decisions for your pupils.

Guiding principles from Mary Myatt to help you consolidate your curriculum

• Don't try to reteach every lesson pupils missed. The whole school population is in the same boat – everyone is losing at least 4 months of education and no school will be able to reteach every lesson pupils missed

• Focus on what you can control, including smartly planned curriculum coverage and sensitive, high-quality teaching

• For most subjects, pupils aren't only taught something once – concepts reappear across Key Stages and are built on over time, e.g. if year 1 missed gathering and recording data in science, they will do this again in year 2; if year 2 missed this they will have done it in year 1

• Think in terms of key concepts that run through your curriculum, rather than specific topics or units: as long as your curriculum is sequenced properly, there will be main threads running through it, e.g. a unit on ancient Greece and a unit on the Magna Carta are linked by the concept of 'democracy' 

• Focus on the most important, threshold concepts: pupils just need to understand enough of these concepts in order to access the next stage of their learning. Not knowing all the small details won't hold them back

• Pupils are entitled to a broad, balanced curriculum: teaching all subjects will help them get back on track (e.g. vocabulary they learned in history will impact overall learning), so don't sacrifice foundation subjects to prioritise core ones

• Dedicate time to this work, but be mindful of staff workload: you don’t want to replace or rewrite your existing curriculum if you’ve already thought it through and it’s working for your pupils. Consider dropping meaningless marking and excessive data collection so teachers can focus on thoughtful lesson planning, and accurately assessing where pupils are - and avoid burn-out

Discussion prompts that help us decide what to teach

• What are the essential concepts in our curriculum that pupils need to understand before moving on? What do we not want pupils to leave their Key Stage without knowing? 

• What parts of our curriculum are less essential, that we can miss or just touch on quickly? E.g. in geography, knowing the length of the river Nile isn't essential, as long as pupils understand the main features of a river

• What are the threshold concepts that enable pupils to better understand other ideas/concepts? As mentioned above, these are the ideas that underpin multiple other aspects of the curriculum – e.g. pupils need to understand the characteristics of 2D shapes before they can understand those of 3D shapes, so we'll prioritise reteaching this

• Is there a common thread running through the units we've missed, that we'll return to in a future unit? 

• If there is a common thread, which unit do we think is most important to the aims of our curriculum, or most meaningful to our pupils? 

 

Cross-curricular questions:

• Which skills or knowledge from one subject can children not access the rest of the curriculum without? E.g. learning to read in Year 1

• Which topics or units have cross-curricular value so are worth focusing on? E.g. vocabulary from history or science that feeds into reading and writing in English

• Which subjects (if any) did we focus on, or not focus on, while pupils were learning at home? E.g. if reading was your main focus over English and maths, there might not be as much of a focus on reading when pupils return

Use knowledge organisers 

Record the key knowledge identified in knowledge organisers . Knowledge organisers won't necessarily be right for every subject. 

The most important thing is that staff can see at a glance what needs to be retaught, and pupils can see what they need to know.

Use low-stakes assessment to find out where pupils have gaps in knowledge

When pupils return, we need to find out where the gaps are in the key concepts and knowledge. 

We will not present pupils with written tests as soon as they come back to school. Instead,  teachers will carry out some low-stakes quizzing and low-threat knowledge checks during lessons to find out what pupils can remember and where they have gaps. Depending on the subject, these could take the form of:

• A quick quiz at the back of exercise books, e.g. 10 minutes to write down everything you can remember about the cold war

• Multiple choice questions in a Google Form

• Discursive pair work, e.g. read the textbook for 10 minutes, then can you tell your partner the 10 features you read about?

• Checking knowledge through discussion, e.g. can they explain a concept in their own words?

This low-stakes approach should help pupils feel secure in what they already know and confident about what else they need to learn.

Teachers will feed the findings of these knowledge checks back to subject leaders or phase leaders – informally, not in the form of data

Adapt what we are consolidating 

 

Based on these findings, teachers’ might choose to adapt:

• The content they are consolidating

• How long they are consolidating for – e.g. if the majority of pupils have fewer gaps than  anticipated, they might decide to consolidate for a shorter period of time

Teachers should also adapt their short-term planning in light of what they're finding out about where pupils are (e.g. if there's one concept the majority of pupils in a year group are struggling with, devote more time to reteaching this).

For some pupils, consolidation lessons won't be enough to fill these gaps. In which case they will be considered for intervention programmes such as ‘Rapid’ or one-to-one tuition. 

 

Set aside time for consolidation lessons

We want to get your pupils up to speed quickly without rushing through content. 

How long? 

At our school we are setting aside up to three lessons each week for catch up and consolidation lessons.  These lessons will take place in addition to the daily Maths and English lessons that we normally teach.  

Teachers can use their timetable to replace up to three foundations subjects each week e.g. history, with a catch up lesson.  However, they must try to rotate the subjects that are missed so that over time children experience all subjects and the key knowledge/skills within them. 

We expect, by Easter, for children to  catch up with their learning and make the usual expected progress. 

Running effective consolidation lessons

• Welcome pupils back, and get back into the learning as soon as you can

• Begin these lessons by celebrating what pupils achieved while they were learning at home

• Decide on the minimum amount of home learning work you want pupils to finish before moving on

• Be explicit about what you're going to be covering:

• Share knowledge organisers 

• Give pupils the opportunity to practise what they're learning and show you that they understand

• Keep low-stakes assessment going throughout 

We will make  sure what we teach in school aligns with any home learning. If some pupils are still learning from home we will consider live-streaming or recording these consolidation lessons via a remote learning platform such as Google Classroom

 

Continue with our normal curriculum

At some point, we will need to start our normal September curriculum. As soon as pupils have mastered the key knowledge identified we will  jump straight into this and run our curriculum as normal

Nursery

Writing:

General mark making and giving meanings to the marks they make

Writing their name

 

Reading:

Initial phonics sounds

Recognising initial sounds in their name and their friend's names

 

Maths:

counting objects to 5

sometimes matching quantities and numerals correctly

using positional language

 

General:

Independently choosing an activity

Draw lines and circles using gross motor movements 

Holds pencil between thumb and two fingers, no longer using whole hand grasp

Holds pencil near point between first and 2 fingers and thumb and uses it with good control

Can copy some letters eg. from their name 

 

Year 1 

Reading

-Review, recall, writing and application of Set 1, 2 and 3 sounds

-Blending of Set 1, 2 and 3 sounds

-Comprehension: verbal answers of retrieval based questions when listening to a story.

 

Writing

-Letter formation of capital and small letters in line with the school handwriting policy

-Name writing

-Using sounds to write CVC words

-Basic sentence writing using the key SPAG concept of capital letters, full stops and finger spaces.

 

Maths

-Number formation, recall and writing of basic numbers from 0-20

-Counting forwards and backwards from 0 – 20

-Recap of 2D and 3D basic shape names.

-One more / one less of numbers up to 10 and 20

-Count and match quantities up to 10 and 20

-Counting in 2’s and 5’s

 

Year 2 

Reading

-Set 1, 2 and 3 sounds: recall and application to spelling words

-Comprehension skills: Verbal answers focusing on the Reading Domains / Skills of retrieval and inference

-Comprehension skills: Written answers focusing on the Reading Domains / Skills of retrieval, inference, analysis, language and prediction. 

-Focus on full sentence answers for written comprehension responses.

 

Writing

-SPAG: review, recap and apply skills of capital letters, fingers spaces and full stops to form simple sentences.

-SPAG: review, recap and apply skills of adjectives, connectives and adverbs to form complex sentences.

-Application and spelling of Year 1 Common Exception words.

 

Maths

-Recall, apply and write number bonds to 10 and 20

-Recall and write focusing on the number formation of numbers from 50 – 100.

-Addition within 10 and 20

-Subtraction within 10 and 20

-Recap on the naming and properties of 2D and 3D shapes.

-Time: o’clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to 

                    

 

Year Group: Y3

 

 

 Year Group: 4 

 

 

 

Year Group: 5

 

 

Year Group: 6

 

 

References

van den Akker, J. (2020). The curriculum: gallimaufry to coherence Mary Myatt, 2018 Melton, Woodbridge, John Catt Educational Ltd£ 15 (pbk), 200 pp. ISBN: 9781911382836. The Curriculum Journal, 31(1), 174-176.