Curriculum design
This very small school in Cumbria is extending their successful 'skills for independent learning' programme into the community, and extending the school into village halls, pubs and churches.
The field trial builds on the school's approach to curriculum design, which starts with the National Curriculum, and considers the skills necessary for successful child-initiated independent learning. The skills are broken down into three main areas - cognition, personal skills and interpersonal skills. The staff have considered these three main skill areas and decided upon components that make up each area of skill. For example, with cognition they consider creativity, enquiry, reasoning, problem solving, information processing, reflective thinking and evaluation. By establishing a learning development worker and a virtual private network the school aims to take self-initiated learning into the community.
The Higher Level Teaching Assistant (HLTA) as a learning skills co-ordinator works alongside teachers, parents and members of the community and is involving them in training, sharing and evaluating learning skills necessary to support the school's wider curriculum. They are also using the rural community to support children's learning by setting up a register of community members willing to share their knowledge, expertise and skills around a variety of subjects. At present the trial involves parents, families, businesses, schools and outside agencies in two rural areas. Whilst the virtual site is focused on one small rural school, interest has been shown from a wider group of people, namely older children, secondary schools, new University of Cumbria, police and Sure Start.
See a map showing the locations of all the Next Practice in Communities for Learning field trial sites.
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