Curriculum
Curriculum Intent
At Peacehaven Community School, our curriculum is firmly rooted in our vision of providing an outstanding, supportive, and inclusive education that fosters cognitive and social-emotional growth. Our values of Aspire, Believe, Contribute, and Achieve drive our ambition. Our curriculum embodies our unwavering commitment to providing an exceptional education that empowers students to reach their full potential and embrace a future filled with success and fulfilment.
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Aspire: Our curriculum instils a sense of ambition within our students by setting high expectations and encouraging them to strive for their personal best. Through a range of subjects and diverse learning experiences, we prepare our students to confidently navigate an ever-changing world, igniting their curiosity and passion for learning and preparing graduates of the future.
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Believe: We cultivate a culture of belief in the abilities of all our students, providing a caring and inclusive learning environment that values each individual. Our broad and balanced curriculum is designed to develop essential life skills, promoting mutual respect, resilience, and positive relationships, while nurturing each student's unique talents and interests.
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Contribute: Our curriculum recognises the importance of developing responsible, engaged citizens who contribute positively to their communities. Students are encouraged to participate in a variety of extracurricular activities and enriching experiences, fostering a strong sense of civic duty, global awareness, and empathy for others.
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Achieve: We are committed to academic excellence, employing innovative, evidence-based teaching methods to inspire our students to achieve their full potential. Our personalised approach to learning ensures that every student's needs, abilities, and interests are met, allowing them to make excellent progress and develop crucial cognitive and social-emotional skills.
Curriculum Implementation
At Peacehaven Community School, we prioritise a well-sequenced curriculum that integrates new knowledge with prior knowledge, building complexity over time. To reduce cognitive load in lessons, retrieval practice is continually used to activate prior knowledge and we believe that exposing students to content multiple times in the curriculum is essential to develop mastery of knowledge and skills, particularly threshold concepts, allowing deeper thinking within lessons.
Formative assessment is used, including the use of mini-whiteboards, to assess student thinking, which then informs teacher planning and teaching. The curriculum is regularly adapted based on student data from assessments, ensuring that our teaching remains responsive to student needs. We believe in using adaptive teaching to provide scaffolding to students when required, which is gradually removed over time. By doing so, we aim to develop successful learners that can achieve and succeed in KS3, KS4, and beyond.
Our curriculum is designed to challenge our students, explicitly teaching meta cognitive strategies to encourage them to become reflective learners that can self-scaffold. We prioritise literacy through the explicit teaching of tier 2 and 3 vocabulary and reading comprehension strategies in all subjects.
Initially, our curriculum begins by building upon threshold concepts and knowledge from KS2 to ensure that our learners are successful and motivated. Our curriculum then uses regular spaced retrieval practice to continually reinforce and build upon student knowledge, understanding, and skills across KS3 and KS4.
We aim to develop students who aspire, believe, contribute, and achieve, equipping them with the necessary knowledge, skills, and strategies to succeed in their futures.