Twitter

08/12/23

Happy Hannukah to the Jewish community. May this festival bring you blessings, peace, and light. pic.twitter.com/HySs2392ed

08/12/23

Today marked the end of our interhouse PE competitions the winners for each year groups are as follows:Year 7 - Newton Year 8 - Wallace Year 9 - Whitlock Year 10 - Tovey Overall winners - Wallace & Strike 🏆 Excellent effort from all house groups 🥳 pic.twitter.com/Aua9TwTWDm

08/12/23

Year 10 and 11 showcased their musical talent during the Harris Academy Ockendon Live Lounge event. Well done to all involved. pic.twitter.com/k7tB9qN3wR

04/12/23

English Literature Oxford university taster day, hosted at Harris Chobham, with 8 of our year 10/11 students! Students came away with even higher aspirations than before, after enjoying various lectures & seminars on different genres of literature. A thoroughly enjoyable day! pic.twitter.com/Bjt47OW3aw

04/12/23

Interhouse competitions have started this week in PE with year 8 starting the week off competing in dodgeball and benchball. Excellent start to the competition. Which house will take the win on Friday? 🥇🥈🥉 pic.twitter.com/FRrD80zAOu

02/12/23

Y11 walking talking their way through English Language Paper 2 with Impress the examiner. Students working hard on a Saturday, with English teachers to support. pic.twitter.com/SOXre5q9SD

29/11/23

As part of raising awareness around men's mental health, here are some conversation starters to support people to start conversations about their mental health. pic.twitter.com/b97Y3MXi9F

29/11/23

This week students had an assembly based around men's mental health. It was great to hear stories from staff from describing their challenges & how they approach self care with mental health. Giving advice to our students & exploring the stigmas around asking for help pic.twitter.com/LFVlh3H8B2

28/11/23

As celebrate birth of Guru Nanak Dev ji, founder of the faith, we can all identify with his core teachings of truth, love, gender equality, working hard for an honest living, meditating upon the One and sharing with others.Best wishes all for a blissful . pic.twitter.com/ED9nEwG0lz

25/11/23

We are delighted to offer 5 fully-funded places on the January cohort of our Sustain and Grow group coaching programme to parent-teachers from ethnic minority backgrounds.https://t.co/gAtXLJEYRZBook your place soon as these tickets will go fast!Thanks to ! pic.twitter.com/ijbAi0y3k3

23/11/23

Year 7 football girls in their new kit tonight. Winning both their Borough games. Excellent start to the season ⚽️ 🔥 pic.twitter.com/kPpWZoaNu7

22/11/23

Year 11 students engaging in the Harris experience independent learning day. pic.twitter.com/1RIxwUfUKs

17/11/23

Our year 7 boys football team in their new kit last night ⚽️🔥 pic.twitter.com/bqJTHPh5kR

12/11/23

Happy Diwali & Bandi Chhor Diwas to all celebrating. An important time to reflect on our internal light and darkness, as well as the events taking place in our world today 🪔🪔🪔 pic.twitter.com/j6PQh0Tjv9

10/11/23

colleagues can enjoy fully-funded 1:1 coaching with the . Choose from our Accreditation, Parental Leave, Return to Work or Transition coaching to support you as you start and grow your family. Find out more and sign up at https://t.co/pBZxdoXZwJ pic.twitter.com/GiwiuAMoO1

10/11/23

This morning our year 10 sports leaders had hot chocolate Friday with Ms Rainey to receive their certificates and celebrate their success over the last year on the course. Well done to all those who qualified 🎉. pic.twitter.com/dgxqb2w2dO

04/10/23

U13 girls have arrived for their Essex cup match at The Billericay School ⚽️ pic.twitter.com/ZqVg7WrhGx

03/10/23

🚨PE CLUBS / FIXTURE ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨 - Wednesday - U13 Essex Cup girls football v Billericay (Away) Thursday - Girls Football club (moved from Wednesday due to the above fixture) Friday - Rugby - all years (moved from Wednesday)

25/09/23

Excellent turn out for all years netball tonight! Over 50 students at the club. Amazing start to our netball season 🔥 pic.twitter.com/fte57ArKQ0

25/09/23

🚨 P.E CLUB ANNOUNCEMENT this week 🚨 - Monday - All years girls netballWednesday - All years boys rugby 🏉 All years girls football ⚽️ Thursday - Years 7 boys football ⚽️ If you have any questions please see a member of the P.E department.

Harris Academies
All Academies in our Federation aim to transform the lives of the students they serve by bringing about rapid improvement in examination results, personal development and aspiration.

Central Office

Bexley

Bromley

Clapham

Croydon

Greenwich

Haringey

Havering

Merton

Newham

Southwark

Stratford

Sutton

Thurrock

Wandsworth

Westminster

Willesden

Curriculum Overview

Curriculum design is the cornerstone to delivering a quality education to all children. We believe in having a knowledge-rich curriculum that delivers broad, diverse and ambitious knowledge invaluable for ensuring all children are ‘in the know’ and are taken beyond their everyday experience. We believe strongly in our curriculum mantra that “Knowledge is Power.  We make it Stick.”  Everything we do from maths to personal development centres around this belief.

The academy ensures that people are protected from discrimination as per the Equality Act 2010 and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014. Every student has the right to access and succeed in learning at Harris Academy Ockendon (HAOC). 

When we choose what to include in our curriculum, we are always aware that we are choosing not to include something else. As such, our subject team leaders begin by fixating on ‘what’ to teach and the intent of their curriculum, before thinking about ‘how’ they will deliver it. With this in mind, we believe in selecting ‘better’ or ‘more powerful knowledge’ in every subject discipline, which is specialised and takes its authority from leading academic institutions.

It is every child’s right, regardless of their academic ability or prior attainment, to access this powerful knowledge to ensure they are not only able to perform well in public examinations but develop the disciplinary knowledge and cultural capital necessary to successfully navigate and interrogate the future world they will encounter. For staff at Harris Ockendon, this is a matter of social justice.

Examples include:

  • In English, we want students to experience the majesty of Shakespeare, and to create deep, cognitive connections in their knowledge by exploring the origins of Greek tragedies and its impact on drama across societies, cultures and time periods.
  • In History, students will develop a good understanding of the lessons to be taken from the Holocaust, but we also know their knowledge and understanding will be richer if they have an appreciation for the impact of genocide more widely by studying other global events in Bosnia, Rwanda and Cambodia.
  • In music, students will develop competent performance skills across musical instruments such as the piano, keyboard, guitar, and using their voice, as well as learning to appreciate and interpret the diverse origins and cultural heritage associated with music by studying Gamelan music of Indonesia or Reggae and Blues music.

Our subject team leaders have designed and planned their curriculum according to the following 5 principles:

  1. The curriculum is driven by powerful knowledge with the challenge ‘pitched up’;
  2. The curriculum is sequenced logically so that new knowledge builds upon old and prepares pupils for the next stage;
  3. The curriculum is specified in detail so that teachers and pupils are clear on what needs to be learned and in what depth;
  4. The curriculum is taught to be remembered, not merely encountered;
  5. The curriculum is supported with a homework strategy that supports the delivery of knowledge to long-term memory.

The approach to curriculum design can therefore be summarised according to the following equation:

Ambitious Intent ⇒ Logically Sequenced ⇒ Specified in Detail

How students learn the curriculum

Making it Stick

Every decision we make about learning and teaching is governed by two truths about learning:

  • If nothing has changed in long term memory, nothing has been learnt
  • Forgetting is inevitable

No matter how brilliant a year 8 Spanish lesson appeared, if the students cannot remember it two weeks later, it wasn’t learnt. Understanding sometimes gets confused with learning, but they are not the same thing. Therefore, everything we ask students to do, and everything we talk to teachers about, is designed to make more knowledge stick in long term memory.

Lessons and lesson structure

We are not overly prescriptive on how lessons should look at Harris Ockendon, but there are some principles that all teachers adhere to.

All lessons start with a high challenge retrieval activity, followed by a period of fully guided instruction (‘I do’  ‘We do’  ‘You do’). This is surrounded by a warm/strict approach to behaviour management: ‘Because we care, what we ask students to do is not optional’.

Stopping the Forgetting – How lessons start

Every lesson at Harris Ockendon starts with 10-15 minutes of high challenge retrieval questions designed to stop the forgetting of the most vital knowledge, facts and skills. The questions pull from a broad knowledge base, including previous topics and sometimes previous years!

Such is the importance we place on ‘stopping the forgetting’, it is expected that all students attempt all the ‘Do Now’ questions, and those not attempting all of them are challenged. Teachers will refrain from providing too much help in the first 10 minutes, instead motivating students to think hard without looking back over previous work.

The teacher then spends time going through the answers, reteaching the most important points if necessary, and students make corrections. The graph below illustrates our belief, that the more knowledge is retrieved in Do Now quizzes, the more is remembered.

Interrupting the forgetting curve

Examples of Do Now quizzes from Maths, Spanish and History;

Writing expressions to solve equations

Masters of memory

Yr 11 do now

Fully guided instruction: ‘I do’ ⇒ ‘We do’ ⇒ ‘You do’

Following the ‘Do Now’, teachers pitch high in the ‘I do’ phase. This is where teachers introduce the new content clearly with great examples, models and explanations. We pitch it high, often above the most able students in the class, so everyone is challenged.

We follow this with a ‘We Do’ phase that provides support. Here you will see processes deconstructed, lots of questions being asked, students helping the teacher do some more examples, paired talk, and practice with writing frames.

Finally, students practise the new thing they’ve learned independently without support. The ‘arm bands are popped’ - there will be no / minimal support from the teacher. Rather than different levels of task, we strive for everyone doing the same, difficult thing. The support given in the ‘We Do’ phase ensures that all students can perform the ‘you do’ practise successfully, gaining confidence and embedding vital knowledge in long term memory as they do so.

Curriculum Review Cycle

In service of ensuring our ambitious curriculum is implemented as intended, the senior leadership team work throughout the year with subject team leaders to review and evaluate the design, sequencing and common approaches to implementation. This follows a cycle throughout the academic calendar during which the following steps are undertaken:

Curriculum review cycle

If you require any further information about our Curriculum, please contact our Senior Vice Principal, Mr Pearce via email at d.pearce@harrisockendon.org.uk

Reading list

Glossary of terms click here

Best recommended books:

  • The researched guide to The Curriculum (Sealy and Bennett) Amazon link
  • How Learning Happens (Kirschner & Hendrick) Amazon link
  • Making Every Lesson Count (Allison & Tharby) Amazon link
  • The Learning Rainforest (Tom Sherrington) Amazon link
  • Making Good Progress? (Daisy Christodoulou) Amazon link

Best recommended blogs: