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The Royal Harbour
Academy
Key Stage 3 Curriculum
The Lower Site curriculum allows for a smooth transition between primary and secondary school. Your child will have two main teachers delivering core subjects. The teachers will build a strong relationship with your child and ensure excellent progress. We also work closely with our primary feeder schools to offer an up-to-date exciting and challenging curriculum that builds on your child’s knowledge and skills.
The curriculum at Key Stage 3 has a specific focus on literacy. We use Talk for Writing in English and humanities and deliver guided-reading lessons. We also offer a raft of numeracy and literacy interventions that are carefully interleaved with the core lessons. In Year 9 students will be able to pick from a broad range of Options to study at GCSE level.
Year 7 & 8
The Lower Site curriculum is unique from most other secondary schools to ensure that the transition from primary to secondary is well supported with a focus on literacy and numeracy. Your son or daughter will have 2 core teachers. 1 teacher will deliver English, history, philosophy and ethics and 1 teacher will deliver maths, science and geography. One of the core teachers will be your child's form tutor. This means the core teachers will really get to know your son or daughter and build a strong relationship with them ensuring your child makes great progress. Specialist teachers will also deliver design technology, art, food studies, computing, Spanish, music, drama, dance and PE throughout the week.
RHA has a close working partnership with local primary school leaders and our curriculum is regularly checked to ensure it is challenging and builds on the skills from KS2. To ensure we continue to improve the literacy skills of our students we use Talk 4 Writing which is a structured approach to writing and this is embedded across all lessons. Students are able to carefully plan and write precisely in great detail about any taught subject topic and this prepares them well for GCSE success.
We also place great value on reading with timetabled guided reading lessons to improve general reading and comprehension skills. A mastery approach is used for the maths curriculum so that the core building blocks of knowledge are secure before moving on to new content meaning that students are not left behind and that we constantly stretch and challenge students to make real substantive progress.
Our learning ethos is underpinned by the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme. This provides a framework for grading progress but more importantly to undertake an enquiry led approach to learning that enriches the experience in the classroom and helps develop the learner attributes such as confidence for a successful and fun educational experience.
Year 9
The Year 9 curriculum has been designed in a bespoke way that continues to encompass and embed the skills learnt at the Lower Site whilst also transforming and furthering these skills to merge with those required for success at Key Stage 4. This includes the use of the Talk for Writing strategy and guided reading being utilised throughout the Year 9 curriculum ensuring that literacy skills remain a key focus in all subject areas, as the year progresses these skills begin to be reshaped and reformed to better suit and support the Key Stage 4 curriculum and preparing our students for responding to examination style questions. This not only aids the way in which the students are able to transition seamlessly from the Lower Site to the Upper Site but also piques their interest in new topics and engages them from the outset as the lessons are tailored to be familiar to them – meaning the only major change they have to adapt to is their physical surroundings.
In Year 9 there are 3 class groups that follow a similar model to the Lower Site by having one core teacher for the English and humanities subjects. These groups are for those students that require additional support to improve their reading ages. This model allows that core teacher to have a good amount of curriculum time with those students to build strong relationships and strengthen their literacy skills.
Leaders have ... developed an innovative approach for lower-school pupils. A single teacher delivers grouped national curriculum subjects. This allows more emphasis to be put on improving literacy and numeracy.
Ofsted
2020
