A specialist SEN school for secondary aged boys with Social, Emotional and Mental Health needs

The LWS curriculum is designed to ensure that all students are able to develop the key skills of literacy and numeracy, whether this be in response to an identified learning need or allowing them to catch up quickly if they have any gaps in fundamental knowledge from their Primary age schooling.

 

For students in Key Stage 3, literacy and numeracy opportunities are embedded throughout the school day: each half term, all subjects focus on addressing a key aspect of Key Stage 1 and 2 English and Maths skills to enable all students to develop skills and confidence. For example, in the first half term of Year 7, all subject lessons will focus on the correct use of capital letters, full stops and question marks as well as measuring time and money. This allows a shadow scheme of work to run discretely alongside the existing timetable, enabling students to catch up quickly and fill any missing gaps in their knowledge. A full breakdown of how literacy and numeracy are embedded across Key Stage 3 can be seen below.

 

Embedded numeracy across Key Stage 3:

 

HT 1 HT 2 HT 3 HT 4 HT 5 HT 6
Year 7 Strands embedded throughout: place value, addition, subtraction,  multiplication, division, fractions, decimals
Measurement – money, time Measurement – perimeter, area Statistics – present, interpret
Geometry – 2D shapes Geometry – 2D/3D shapes
HT 1 HT 2 HT 3 HT 4 HT 5 HT 6
Year 8  Strands embedded throughout: percentage, ratio, proportions
Measurement – area, volume Geometry – position, direction Statistics – present, interpret, problem solve
Geometry – 2D/3D shapes  Geometry – Angles, lines

 

Embedded literacy across Key Stage 3:

 

HT 1 HT 2 HT 3 HT 4 HT 5 HT 6
Year 7  Capital letters

Punctuation – full stops/ question marks

Punctuation – exclamation marks, commas in a list, inverted commas

Consonants and vowels

Consonants and vowels

prepositions

Prepositions

Adjectives

Adjectives

Verbs

Verbs, nouns and adverbs
Year 8  Simple and compound sentences Expanding noun phrases Complex sentences Relative clauses Sentence openers Opportunity for recap

 

Every morning, we dedicate 15 minutes to developing all students’ spellings, handwriting and numeracy skills.  A full breakdown of the morning schedule can be seen below. These short bursts of activity help students not only focus and prepare for the day ahead whilst also providing a great opportunity for staff to monitor progress and celebrate success! We use the Numeracy Ninjas programme which is designed to fill gaps in students’ basic mental calculation strategies and also to empower them with the numeracy skills and fluency  required to fully access Key Stage 4 study. Spelling sessions are focused around the 300 most used words in the English language and the Key Stage 2 compulsory spellings list, which helps to ensure students are able to access a secondary curriculum. Weekly handwriting sessions use the Kinetic Letters approach. Students work through progressive activities to develop flow and fluency in pursuit of confidently producing legible handwriting. 

 

Morning personal development sessions:

 

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Spellings to learn over the week are shared Numeracy Ninjas Kinetic Letters handwriting practice Numeracy Ninjas Spellings are assessed

 

Across the school, teachers will create a positive and supportive reading atmosphere and provide opportunities for reading in lessons across all subjects. To support the development of fluency, staff model the correct pace, pitch and volume required when reading aloud. Students will develop confidence in reading aloud through strategies such as echo reading and choral reading. To support the development of inference and comprehension, key vocabulary will be pre-taught before a text or resource is used and teachers will use supplementary visual information to support understanding. Developing summary skills and predictions from texts will be supported through questioning to connect prior knowledge to new contexts. We have a dedicated whole school reading lesson once a week where students can read books as a class or independently. Students reading and spelling ages are assessed termly which helps us to identify those students who would benefit from personalised literacy intervention.

 

LWS is proudly a Kinetic Letters school. Staff have been trained to deliver Kinetic Letters (KL) as a consistent method of supporting the development of handwriting including correct pen/pencil hold and letter formation. Each lesson, the teacher will model the KL font when writing the date and key question on the whiteboard. Students will be supported to focus on key features of quality handwriting using consistent terminology such as the ground line, top branch and bottom branch. Students are not expected to use joined up handwriting in their work, instead the focus is purely on developing confidence and legibility when writing by practicing the KL font.

 

Whilst we recognise that students may have difficulties with the presentation of their work, high expectations are important to ensure students are real world ready. In every lesson, students will be provided with pencil cases that contain a KL pencil, pen, rubber, ruler and highlighter. Other subject specific stationary will be added where appropriate. Students will write the date and key question at the start of every lesson, and will be supported in using rulers appropriately when drawing graphs, tables and charts.

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Contact Info
  • LWS Academy, Montefiore Drive, Sarisbury Green, Southampton, SO31 7NL
  • 01489 582684
  • enquiries@lws.gfmat.org

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