Curriculum

At Dixons Cottingley Academy, we build a partnership between parents, students and teachers that puts learning first. We help our students to value learning by activating them as owners of their own learning.

Our teachers are passionate about teaching and learning; they are able to present challenging learning tasks. Their expertise allows them to 'read' their classrooms and to be more responsive to learners. They are extremely flexible and take every opportunity to maximise learning. They are great seekers and users of feedback.

We firmly believe that assessment is the bridge between teaching and learning. Therefore, every lesson at Dixons Cottingley will show evidence of the following core features:

1. Intelligent sequencing
2. Highly tailored learning activities
3. Effective formative assessment

These are compulsory features of all our lessons that shape how students learn and how teachers teach.

In our classrooms and in our schemes of work and lessons plans, we value knowledge, skills and understanding.

Teachers are free to teach as they want as long as students learn and make progress. However, we do expect a few core strategies to be embraced by every teacher in every lesson – for example, a No Hands Up rule to ensure all questions are targeted and all students are engaged.

We have also adapted ‘the cycle of highly effective teaching’ developed by Achievement First and introduced Data Days to ensure that evidence about learning is used to adjust instruction to better meet student needs. We have taken ideas from Uncommon Schools and Doug Lemov’s work, particularly around questioning. We have also developed teacher talent through disciplined, deliberate and intelligent practice and coaching. For example, we practise key techniques collectively as a staff.

The LRC is open to students before, during and after the normal academy day for homework support and independent study / reading.

Please see the links to key documentation given below for further information about curriculum, assessment and teaching.

Curriculum

All children are entitled to a curriculum and to the powerful knowledge which will open doors and maximise their life chances:

• Our academies challenge social inequality by instilling shared and powerful knowledge
• Children need powerful knowledge to understand and interpret the world, and to think in new and unexpected ways. Without it, they remain dependent upon those who have it
• Shared and powerful knowledge is verified through learned communities e.g. universities, research and subject associations
• Powerful academic knowledge is cognitively superior to everyday knowledge, transcending and liberating students from their daily experience
• Shared knowledge is a foundation for a just and sustainable democracy.
• Citizens educated together, share an understanding of our common values, and can understand, cooperate and shape the world together

Our curriculum is led by, collaborated on and delivered by high-quality subject specialists, working in cross-cutting teams to create the richest narrative possible for their students. “A good curriculum will always be contested... The arguments that ensue show how difficult it is to arrive at their ‘best’, but if we don’t care for quality then the very thinking of our pupils will be dumbed down.”

The grammar of each subject is given high status; the specifics of what we want students to learn matter and the traditions of subject disciplines are respected.

Skills and understanding are seen as forms of knowledge and we do not believe that there are any real generic skills that can be taught outside of specific knowledge domains. The curriculum should be planned vertically and horizontally giving thought to the optimum knowledge sequence for building secure schema. The curriculum should be designed to be remembered in detail: to be stored in our students’ long-term memories so that they can later build on it forming ever wider and deeper schema.

As a result, a good knowledge-rich curriculum embraces learning from cognitive science about memory, forgetting and the power of retrieval practice.

The curriculum is owned by students from all faiths and backgrounds, not by any one. The selected content should conform to shared cultural agreements of what is considered valuable to know. It is the entitlement of all and we resist parental opt-outs. The curriculum should embrace and value the most powerful knowledge from a variety of cultures and traditions.

At each phase, the curriculum should focus on closing gaps, early intervention, and developing the core literacy and numeracy skills for success at that level. Both in and out of the classroom, the curriculum should build the hard work, diligence and resilience necessary for success in life.

The curriculum should introduce students to new experiences and powerful knowledge beyond the classroom and outside the academy to broaden their horizons and to prepare them fully for later life.

Curriculum breadth and academic rigour are key to our mission: “Imparting broad knowledge to all children is the single most effective way to narrow the gap between demographic groups through schooling.”

Please note that parents have a right to withdraw their child from part or all of Religious Education (RE) and Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) please contact the academy via email should you wish to discuss this or if you wish to find out more information about the curriculum.