Our Approach

Our Approach

Vision and Intent

At Houstone School, our goal is to ensure every pupil benefits from a broad, ambitious, knowledge-rich curriculum taught by highly skilled teachers.  Our well-designed and well-sequenced curriculum sets pupils on the pathway to becoming highly educated adults so that they can become active participants of society, living happy and fulfilling lives.

Our curriculum maps the knowledge our students require to make progress in each subject discipline. Our pupils learn to view the world from different perspectives and respectfully challenge varying interpretations. By grounding new information in a well-developed web of prior learning, we enable all pupils, whatever their starting point, to achieve academic success. Overviews of the curriculum can be seen in each of the subject areas.

Implementation and enactment

We believe transformative outcomes can be achieved through a combination of excellent curriculum planning and high-quality teacher instruction.  We ensure our curriculum is taught to be remembered by ensuring our approach is research-informed. Teachers break learning down to guide pupils towards clearly defined curricular goals, revisit and build on prior learning regularly, and check pupil understanding carefully.

Preparation is key to effective delivery of the curriculum. Our teachers think carefully about the most effective way to communicate the planned knowledge, consider which areas will need particular focus or emphasis, and identify areas where pupils may struggle or could benefit from greater challenge.  This important work is led by Heads of Department who ensure teachers are well supported by subject specific professional development, co-planning opportunities and regular feedback.

All students are entitled to the same rigorous academic curriculum irrespective of their starting point. Students are primarily taught in mixed ability teaching groups with broad setting for maths and science. Some groups (primarily for pupils reading well below their chronological reading age) may have a second teacher or Learning Mentor (teaching assistant) to support student progress, and some pupils may receive small-group phonics or direct instruction maths programmes. Pupil groupings are reviewed regularly to respond to needs. 

Our school routines support strong implementation of the curriculum. Calm and orderly transitions, clear classroom entry and exit routines, and common expectations across classrooms maximise efficiency and enable all pupils to learn.  Our lessons contain a balance of review of prior learning, clear and concise teacher instruction and modelling, independent practice and self-marking, all of which are used to support pupils to understand and remember new knowledge. 

Impact and assessment

We use assessment to ensure our pupils have learned the curriculum.  In all lessons teachers will routinely check for understanding, and during independent practice teachers will monitor pupils’ work to ensure errors or misconceptions are addressed at the earliest opportunity. 

Assessments will take place at the end of each unit to assess how successfully pupils have remembered the content recently taught. Formal assessments take place twice a year, assessing carefully selected content drawn from throughout the relevant key stage. Teachers use these assessments to plan their next steps in teaching so that they can close any knowledge gaps that persist.