CASE

Lever 1: Relationships – we can’t expect our students to return joyfully, and many of the relationships that were thriving, may need to be invested in and restored. We need to plan for this to happen, not assume that it will. Reach out to greet them, use the relationships we build to cushion the discomfort of returning.

Lever 2: Community – we must recognise that curriculum will have been based in the community for a long period of time. We need to listen to what has happened in this time, understand the needs of our community and engage them in the transitioning of learning back into school.

Lever 3: Transparent Curriculum – all of our students will feel like they have lost time in learning and we must show them how we are addressing these gaps, consulting and co-constructing with our students to heal this sense of loss.

Lever 4: Metacognition – in different environments, students will have been learning in different ways. It is vital that we make the skills for learning in a school environment explicit to our students to reskill and rebuild their confidence as learners.

Lever 5: Space – to be, to rediscover self, and to find their voice on learning in this issue. It is only natural that we all work at an incredible pace to make sure this group of learners are not disadvantaged against their peers, providing opportunity and exploration alongside the intensity of our expectations.

‘A Recovery Curriculum:  Loss and Life for our children and schools post pandemic.’ Professor Barry Carpenter (2020)

Creativity

To support pupils’ mental wellbeing the curriculum will focus on learning that promotes self-expression. Some of the work is based on activities from the the Transition Toolkit (Rae, 2020). In addition, there will be focus on artistic and craft-based learning to support pupils’ fine motor skills and concentration. The intention being pupils who have been traumatised during the pandemic can undertake creative learning to encourage communication with work matched to children’s needs. Working in small groups (socially distanced) will support children to reengage with their friends and allow them to talk and communicate with each other whilst focussing on tasks.

Activity

Children will have spent a large proportion of their time in their homes due to the COVID-19 outbreak so there could be a major challenge to stay physically active. Inactive behavior and low levels of physical activity can have negative effects on quality of life, health and well-being of children (Yarımkaya & Esentürk, 2020). Therefore the curriculum has been designed to promote physical activity outside, within the framework of social distancing. A proportion of the school day will be spent engaged in learning activities that encourage play and sport. In addition, learning spaces will be created on the school grounds to support pupils to learn in the open air. Each setting will develop its physical education plan to support pupils to exercise and be active whilst maintaining social distancing.

Standards

Children’s learning was ended abruptly at the beginning of the pandemic, as a result there will gaps in learning and knowledge that will need to be supported. Teachers will co-construct learning to reinforce the key basic skills of mathematics, reading, writing spelling and grammar. The planning of the curriculum will support a steady development of the learning that has been missed; work will continue to be sent home electronically for children to work with parents.

Emotional well-being

Pupils will need support to speak about their experiences with specific focus on trauma informed approaches (Carpenter, 2020). There will be emphasis on drama, speaking and listening to support pupil’s mental health and well-being. The use of circle-based activities through PSHCE will develop pupil’s spiritual development. Children and young people will need to find and build upon their inner resources of resilience and adults will need to do likewise alongside learning how to talk to them about their fears and to do so in a therapeutic way which enable them to heal and to cope in their new reality. Additionally, there will be enhanced emphasis on pupils who have become dysregulated with development of consistent deployment of school behaviour policy (Carpenter, 2020). The policy will be reworked to take in to account the changes that will need to be in place to support pupils re-engaging with routine and to develop self-regulatory habits. The school behaviour policy will reengineer the use of antecedent-behaviour-consequence, scripted behaviour language, praise and token economy (Bennett, 2020; EEF, 2019)