Building a curriculum model

Some schools have used the idea of a curriculum tree as the starting point for completely rethinking the way they organise learning. Many schools are finding it helpful to think of:

• The national curriculum content as the leaves of a tree;
• The skills, attitudes and attributes you want to develop in learners as the roots.

The related picture of the curriculum tree from the noticeboard, shows how this might look. The challenge is to look at both the leaves and the roots - what you have to teach and the outcomes you want to achieve - and to see how you can make the connection between the two by designing effective learning experiences. These learning experiences form the trunk of the tree: the activities, lessons and events that link the leaves to the roots.

The example below is the result of a whole school training day. Colleagues from different year groups were asked to think about:

• The leaves (content) - what are the key learning objectives?
• The roots (outcomes) - what wider skills do they want to promote?
• The trunk (learning experiences) - what learning activity are they going to plan? How long will this take and how will time be organised? Who needs to be involved? Where will the learning take place? How does this link to other subjects or prior learning?

May 1st training 21st curriculum leaf text 1.87 MB

Curriculum Tree 1.5 MB