Our Curriculum Offer
We deliver a broad, balanced and rich curriculum to meet the individual needs and interests of our young people. Our curriculum is challenging and knowledge rich. It raises aspirations, outcomes and maximises learning opportunities, with scaffolded support.
Our curriculum provides core subjects and ASDAN (Award Scheme Development & Accreditation Network), Functional Skills and Forest Schools. It provides academic, practical and independence elements. We teach the way the young person learns. We use a wide range of resources to teach, and learning can take place indoors or outdoors, and within the local community. The curriculum provides connections, a sense of belonging and the flexibility for person centred development and learning.
Our learners acquire and practise life skills to help them reach their full potential and achieve more. This includes all areas of development, from qualifications to successful transitions, which results in an improved pathway to adulthood. Bespoke learning programmes are used to meet individual needs. Programmes are aspirational and carefully assessed to ensure progression, and to demonstrate what learners have achieved.
We know that learning outside the classroom is a highly effective way to engage reluctant learners, allowing a range of educational and vocational activities through a focus on practical, independence and environmental skills. A less formal approach also encourages shared learning and the building of social skills.
Enterprise projects result in increased understanding of the world of work for our young people. Learning within the community enables our young people to explore wider aspects of life. Learners are supported to engage with other people, organisations and environments, which in turn enhances their social understanding and interaction, as well as building knowledge of the area in which they live and the opportunities for fulfilment.
We assess against our curricular framework and successfully evidence and track progress against individual targets related to the learners’ EHC Plans. This is in line with DfE requirements and guidance.
Our curriculum is regularly reviewed to ensure that it is broad, balanced and is the best offer for the cohort of learners at the school.
At Three Bridges School, we teach learners individually and in small groups to ensure their personalised needs are met.
The core subjects of mathematics, English and ICT are supplemented by a range of vocational and other academic subjects, to enable the delivery of a broad, rich curriculum which also supports learners’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
Examples of curriculum road maps from our transition group can be seen here.
Reading Scheme
Read Write Inc. Phonics is the UK’s number one systematic synthetic phonics programme. Learners develop reading fluency and comprehension, spell and write with confidence and learn to articulate their ideas and understanding.
Created by Dame Ruth Miskin, it is a complete literacy programme for learners from Reception up to older secondary learners.
The programme is published by Oxford University Press and includes comprehensive planning for daily phonics lessons and reading, spelling and writing activities. It also includes decodable storybooks giving our learners the confidence to read and enjoy stories.
How does it transform reading and writing progress for every learner at Three Bridges?
- Every lesson connects with the last and each activity connects with the next: the phonics, the reading and writing.
- Learners work in targeted progress groups or 1:1 so they can all participate. Every learner is assessed each half term to ensure the speediest progress.
- Talking is at the heart of every lesson. Learners establish good routines that enable them to explain and practise what they’ve been taught with a partner.
Vocational Pathways and Work Experience
Three Bridges Education has an embedded careers programme that aims to inform and encourage learners to consider their career options and take steps to understand their choices and pathways. We provide statutory independent careers guidance to learners from year 7 onwards.
Our programme has been developed to meet the expectations outlined in the Gatsby Benchmarks:
- A stable careers programme with a careers leader
- Learning from career and labour market information
- Addressing the needs of each learner
- Linking curriculum learning to careers
- Encounters with employers and employees
- Experience of workplaces
- Encounters with further and higher education
- Personal guidance
Our programme doesn’t show bias towards any particular career path and promotes a full range of technical and academic options for learners. It is structured in a way that builds upon the learners’ aspirations, their destination/life post school, their previous learning and their Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) outcomes, particularly the outcomes specified within Preparation for Adulthood from Year 9.
The careers programme is differentiated into four levels; Pre-Discovery, Discovery, Explorer, and Transition. Our learners are encouraged to think appropriately about their future. We provide aims, objectives and activities for each level.
