KS3 Curriculum

Our Key Stage 3 curriculum is rooted in our commitment to grow the whole child, creating life-long learners who embrace opportunities and know how to create agency in their own lives. It is anchored in our core principles of Friendship, Excellence, Opportunity. It embraces curiosity and risk taking by placing our long-term commitment to the importance and pedagogies of talk and the culture of reading at its heart and is underpinned by the moral purpose that all children deserve the opportunity to become effective communicators who are entitled to a broad and balanced curriculum.

Enrichment in Key stage 3

Our school motto is Friendship, Excellence and Opportunity. We believe that our well constructed enrichment programme provides a host of excellent opportunities for students to be challenged outside of their comfort zone. The foundation our curriculum is what happens in the classroom; in order for our intent to be fully realised, we are committed to providing rich and strategically planned enrichment opportunities throughout Key Stage 3. In Year 7 all students have the opportunity to practise their language skills and experience a different culture on the summer trip to Boulogne. A residential activity based trip to Danbury Outdoor Activity Centre takes place in Year 8 and a cultural, historical trip to Ypres in Year 9 and trips to the theatre, including all year 7s attending a panto and all year 9s visiting The Globe to see a Shakespeare play. Furthermore, the science department embraces learning outside of classroom with trips to Colchester Zoo and the Science Museum. The Geography department focus on fieldwork skills in their rivers unit and the Drama department ensure that all Year 7 students participate in an annual performance to other students, including primary.

In school there are opportunities for Key Stage 3 students to become involved in a wide variety of sporting and non-sporting clubs. Some examples of the clubs currently running are:

DT Workshop, Art Club, Book Club, Chess Club, Vocal Club, Keyboard Club, Music Tech Club,  Languages Club, Science Club, Basketball, Running, Football, Trampolining, Netball, Rugby and Fitness.

We strongly encourage your children to participate in the wide variety of opportunities offered. 

 

 

 

 

Assessment for Progress

The word "assessment" derives from the Latin "assidere" meaning to "sit by" and our approach to assessment at Key Stage 3 takes this as its guiding pronciple. Assessment is about sitting alongside students, helping them to reflect on their own attainment and progress and nurturing them to become self-regulatory, increasingly independent and motovated learners. 

To make this happen in the classroom we use a system called Assessment for Progress (A4P) to help students, parents and teachers monitor progress and to make the changes in the classroom that each student needs to be the best they can be. 

Each subject creates its own set of attainment descriptors, based on the national curriculum and honed to meet the needs of the children in our community. 

Each term parents receive an interim report which sets out their teachers' appraisals of their attainment, progress and a set of key behaviours (collaboration, readiness, engagement, enrichmment). More detailed information on what each of these terms mean can be found in the assembly slides at the bottom of this page.  

To find out more about each subject's curriculum, please use the links below:

English	Maths	Science	Languages
History	Geography	Design & Technology	Computing
Art	Drama	Music	RE
PE	CPSHE