Background

Saddleworth School is an 11–16 mixed community secondary school in Uppermill, Oldham, Greater Manchester, with 1,369 pupils.

As a school they have been using Exploring Science KS3 since January 2018. When Amy Handley started as curriculum leader, she wanted to ensure that their KS3 curriculum fully supported progression to the Edxecel KS4 course and Exploring Science felt the best way to do this.

Engaging students and developing skills to prepare students for GCSE

Exploring Science allows us to easily develop skills from KS3 to KS4 because each unit maps out clearly the knowledge and skills that are being developed. We can easily see where we are teaching the skills a good scientist should have and where we will revisit these across our curriculum.

We are working alongside our maths department to map out our maths skills to ensure we have a common approach to teaching and are teaching them at times that work for us both.

The front of class ActiveBook allow us to share relevant clips, animations and interactive resources that all link to relevant examples in our students’ lives.

We use the practical resources a lot and enjoy using the differentiated aspect of these.

We have also just bought the KS3 Science Lab books to further enhance our teaching of practical skills and ensure the development of skills from KS3 to KS4.

Planning our curriculum and mapping to the new Ofsted Framework

For September 2019 our focus is to ensure we have clearly mapped out subject knowledge, skills and enrichment across Years 7 – 11. This will not only show where these are being taught but also when ideas are revisited. We are providing enrichment by making links to engaging activities in our lessons, in extracurricular projects, and with employers and STEM careers.

The new interactive Scheme of Work will help with planning curriculum routes which are editable to allow for personalisation for our students. Sharing with the rest of the department allows everyone to quickly access the relevant Exploring Science resources and saves planning time.

How we assess accurately and track progress from
11-16

We currently use end of unit tests for KS3 and KS4.

The progression service spreadsheets allow us to convert easily from steps to an indicative grade but also allow us and students to see security in the step. Students are aware that the steps at KS3 and GCSE are the same and they like this consistency when looking at the challenge in success criteria and the demand of the exam questions.

For year 9 we are currently reviewing their learning at KS3 by completing the GCSE ready test. Analysis of this using the progression services allows us to identify strengths and weaknesses in key areas and inform our schemes of learning, planning and teaching at KS4.

We’re also looking forward to the Assessment Builder Tool which will allow us to produce tests that combine units together and enable us to revisit prior learning.