Today is Thursday 13th August 2020.  A Level results day.  There is a lot wrong with today, so I am going to say nothing else about it, and instead focus my mind – just for a while – on writing this overdue follow-up to my previous posts about our curriculum review.

Previously I have written about how we looked at sequencing, and also how we established ‘benchmarks’.  Here at Kangaroo Maths, we are now referring to these benchmarks as ‘BIG Ideas’.  I also promised that the best part of the process for me was yet to come.  So, here it is …

Our discussions within the department on that TED day led to a conclusion about the stories, history and nuggets of information that we wanted our students to experience; those things that are not specifically on the curriculum, but are so fundamental to a deep enjoyment and appreciation of mathematics.  In fact, we felt quite strongly that this was a large part of the ‘cultural capital’ in our subject.  For example, all students should know that Florence Nightingale was actually a pioneer of statistics; all students should hear the story of Srinivasa Ramanujan and the number 1729 when learning about cube numbers.

So, we ended up going through each of the Key Stage 3 schemes of work and listing all of the ‘essential experiences’ which came to mind.  Some of these things already had resources or activities we were aware of (and often they can be found on this site – see some listed at the bottom of the page), while others were things we just had in mind and dropped into lessons more informally.  What we wanted to do though, was to try and ensure that the key ‘essential experiences’ were ones all students would encounter.

The final task was to combine all of this into a curriculum map – a single side of paper for each stage that communicated the sequencing, benchmarking, and cultural capital (known in more friendly terms as units, big ideas and essential experiences).  For this I was delayed by (1) my inability to translate the picture in my mind into a design on paper, and (2) a pandemic.  Eventually I was inspired by Tim Lamb from Melksham Oak Community School, who tweeted a picture of his own curriculum map.  It is him I have to thank for the idea and use of hexagons in the ‘Stage 7 big picture’ below.

Here is a taster of resources that exemplify the intention of the curriculum map:

There will be more news about the latest developments with Kangaroo Maths soon.  We just need to finalise that revision guide / workbook / study guide / THING!  So close now …

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