Hello Curriculum Thinkers,
Q: What do curriculum led financial planning and Star Wars have in common?
A: Usually, not a lot. But this year, you can learn about CLFP on Star Wars day 🎉
Read on to find out more.
But first, save some time researching a more diverse canon thanks to Curriculum Thinkers member - The Stanway School.
📚 6 steps and 11 books to make your reading canon more diverse.
In yesterday’s masterclass, the team at The Stanway School shared how they have embedded diversity into their curriculum.
They discussed student voice, staff training, whole school events and more.
They also shared loads about their reading canon.
Here’s what they did in English…
We invested in new texts to ensure a diverse variety of authors. We used these as either whole year group texts or class readers during LRC lessons.
We’ve used modern retellings to explore classic texts.
We’ve used critical theory to make students more aware of an author’s perspective and examine attitudes.
We’ve arranged some fabulous author visits from diverse authors
We worked with our KS3 co-ordinator and LRC co-ordinator to overhauling biographies and autobiographies to expose them to all sorts of role models from all sorts of backgrounds.
Introduced form time novels to all year groups
Those 11 books…
The Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds.
The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta.
Noughts and Crosses by Malori Blackman.
I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai.
You are a champion by Marcus Rashford.
Heartstopper by Alice Oseman.
Wonder by RJ Palacio (used in Year 7 form time)
Once by Morris Gleitzman (used in Year 8 form time)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night (used in Year 9 form time)
To Kill a Mockingbird (used in Year 10 form time)
Why did they choose these books? Watch the replay to find out.
📎 Resources the Stanway team shared alongside their master class include:
Example of Year 10 Personal Development Survey
Analysis of survey results used to build focus areas
Deeper dive into survey responses
Student Voice presentation to SLT
Support cards - LGBTQA+ version
Black History Month curriculum plans
Restorative conversation guidance
Example of English work to show impact of Diversity in the curriculum
📺 CLFP - Curriculum Led Financial Planning: the dos, the don'ts and the dark arts.
Getting staffing right is vital to making sure your students succeed. But now, more than ever, there are serious limitations to what’s possible within your budget. There are choices you’ll need to make that will be both difficult and unpopular.
Through CLFP, Mike Hoad - VP, Curriculum and Assessment at Walton Academy - has not only found answers to these challenges, he’s helped them to save tens of thousands of pounds to invest in more pastoral support and build new classrooms.
Join us to learn:
How to do rigorous CLFP (live demonstration in Excel).
How to avoid problems like: too many teachers teaching out of specialism, late and unexpected recruitment, overspend and staff who are unhappy with their timetable.
How to make decisions about staffing, recruitment and running courses using metrics, principles, compromises and other dark arts (through the lens of some real life scenarios).
📅 Wed May 4th (be with you 😉 ) Not a Star Wars fan? 😞
🕞 3.30pm
Thank you to everyone who helped answer questions inside the community last week.
If you need a hand accessing any resources in this email, hit reply and we’ll get it sorted.
Sent with ❤️ from the Curriculum Thinkers Team at We Are In Beta.
Sent this by a friend?
Curriculum Thinkers quick links.
🔎 National Curriculum SLT Directory of Practice
💬 National Subject Leader Directories and Groups
🎥 Master classes recordings and Curriculum Thinking Week talks
🆕 New here? Welcome! Catch up on previous editions of Curriculum This Week via the archive