Building the Curriculum

Building the Curriculum 3 sets out the learning and teaching should:

• be engaging and active

• set challenging goals

• promote shared expectations and standards

• include timely, accurate feedback

• make use of learning intentions, success criteria and personal learning planning

• be collaborative

• reflect the ways different learners progress

The opportunities in this framework for developing interdisciplinary learning can encourage more relevant, more engaging and more enterprising learning and teaching. Curriculum planners at all stages should regularly consider the opportunities presented by the experiences and outcomes to develop active learning throughout. Planning should encourage participation by, as well as being responsive to, the learner, who can and should influence and contribute to the process. This is particularly important for those children and young people who need additional support for their learning. Teachers’ professional judgement about the progress children and young people are making and the point at which they should progress from one level to another will be important features of learning and teaching approaches. To support curriculum planning and to ensure that all learners have access to an active, enterprising learning environment, a coherent approach to planning learning, teaching and assessment and to sharing information about progress and achievements is needed. Assessment information is used for many, varied purposes and it is essential that assessment activities are planned in a way that fits these purposes. Learners and others involved in their learning need timely, accurate feedback about what they have learned and how much and how well they learned it. This helps to identify what they need to do next and who can help them build up their knowledge, understanding and skills. A young person’s progress should be assessed in ways and at times appropriate to that person’s learning needs. Judgements made about this learning should be based on evidence from a broad range of sources, both in and out of school, and by reference to a learner’s progress over time, across a range of activities.

The approaches to assessment developed through Assessment is for Learning provide a sound platform to support this planning. Learning, teaching and assessment should be designed in ways that reflect the way different learners progress to motivate and encourage their learning. To support this, all learners should be involved in planning and reflecting on their own learning, through formative assessment, self and peer evaluation and personal learning planning. Staff will need to have a clear understanding of how their own pupils are progressing in relation to others in their establishment, authority and different parts of the country, against the outcomes and experiences at different levels.

Reflective Questions

1. Approaches to planning must be coherent around learning, teaching and assessment. What are the implications for your current learning, teaching and assessment policies and practices?

2. Does your curriculum provide a sufficient emphasis on active, enterprising learning approaches that encourage creativity and innovation?

3. How effectively do you make clear to learners what they are learning, what success looks like and what is expected of them? Do you provide sufficiently high quality feedback to learners about how much and how well they have learned? Are learners involved in this process?

4. What strategies will you have to adopt to develop consistent application of standards?

5. How will you use the flexibility of Curriculum for Excellence to provide opportunities and pathways for all learners including those with additional support needs and those who require more choices and more chances to progress?

6. It is important that more able children and those who make faster progress do not ‘race’ through the levels. How can you plan greater variety of contexts, depth and greater challenge into the experiences and outcomes for these children and young people?