RELENTLESS TEACHING AND LEARNING

Key Stage 3 Mastery Curriculum.

 

The programme is designed to explicitly teach the basics of English Grammar. We have found that by ‘peppering through’ teaching of grammar, we were still covering KS3 level grammar well into KS4. Furthermore, many of the common mistakes made in KS4 (could of, we was etc.) could be avoided with more explicit teaching of grammar rules and a more rigorous focus on ‘mastering’ the techniques at KS3.

Mastery is a relatively new idea to the English Curriculum, although it has been used to great effect more widely in the teaching of mathematics, and at first the concept can seem quite dry. However, we have and are adapting the basic model so that we begin each module with a discreet lesson  before going on to apply this skill through study of a wider and more traditional curriculum (poetry, prose and drama study, along with creative writing, writing to form and non-fiction.) Each module will become a learning episode whose length is fluid depending on the time it takes the class to master a skill.

 

The aim with Mastery is to embed learning into long-term memory through the 100% + 20% model. This is based on numerous academic research which states that for knowledge to be transferred into long-term memory it must be learned 100% and then you must keep going for another 20%. This will be achieved in our programme by the enrichment activities that are designed to allow students to apply knowledge and embed it. This will also allow for Home Learning to become more applicable as the activities set will be directly relevant to the +20%. Home Learning will be written into schemes of work to allow the tasks to be embedded in the learning episode and allow students to see the relevance of the tasks they are being asked to complete. Once the skills are mastered they become “non-negotiable” and will be ticked off the checklist of skills at the front of a student’s book, along with the date on which it was mastered. From then on, during marking, a teacher will underline in red if a skill has been used inappropriately and green if it has been applied correctly. This will allow for easy visual identification for students if there is a mistake. This can also be used as a self-assessment activity for students, whereby they can check their own work before they submit it.

 

The rationale behind the Mastery programme is to ensure that we are not “catching up” with key skills at a later date. Formative and summative assessment is built into the curriculum and to allow for corrective teaching to be done before wrong ideas are embedded, and the enrichment allows for numerous Stretch and Challenge Opportunities. Theoretically, this will then improve the quality of writing from students when they reach the critical GCSE years, allowing us to spend more time on exam technique and critical analysis of texts and not wasting time on grammar that should have been mastered earlier on in the students’ school careers.