How we learn at Connaught...

Our Curriculum

Our curriculum at Connaught is underpinned by the Equals Curriculum. This curriculum is designed for pupils working significantly below the level of the National Curriculum, and is built on the belief that students with Profound, Complex, and Severe Learning Disabilities learn differently. 

The Equals curriculum champions a spiral curriculum model designed specifically to meet these unique needs, focusing on engagement, communication and independence with highly specialised and responsive pedagogy. The core principle is that the learner is always at the centre and that learning is personalised. We have taken these principles and developed a curriculum offer that aims to provide our students with a breadth of experiences and is not linear subject-based curriculum content. Our curriculum aims to support students' independence and readiness for the next phase of their lives. 

curriculum overview principles .png

 

Personal Learning Goals (PLGs):

All students at Connaught have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). Teachers and class teams develop smaller goals to support students working towards their EHCP outcomes. These smaller goals are known as personal learning goals at Connaught. 

These goals are reviewed, which break longer-term aims into small, manageable steps. Whilst we have curriculum areas, for example Art, Students will work towards their own, personalised and individual goals. 

Example: 

During an Art lesson a child may be working towards a communication goal such as making a request for ‘more’, or a physical goal such as fine or gross motor development.

Below are diagrams that show the relationship between student's EHCPs and our curriculum:  

early foundations pathway efp curriculum overview 2.pdf

 

skill development pathway sdp curriculum overview 2.pdf

 

Themes:

We use a range of themes at Connaught to provide meaningful learning contexts and experiences for our students. There is a rolling plan of themes which aim to provide students with opportunities for breadth of experience, but also opportunities to practise skills and apply knowledge across a range of contexts. This supports our students to generalise and maintain knowledge and skills over time. 

Our themes are chosen with our young people in mind, each Autumn term focuses on the young people at Connaught and the topics are chosen, recognising that this term often means various changes for young people, these can include staff, environment, peers etc. This ensures, all staff are placing our young people at the centre of the curriculum.  In the Spring and Summer Term, the Equal’s ‘World About Me’ schemes of work, then provide the topics. 

Personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) and relationship and sex education (RSE) is taught across our curriculum. We have mapped out topics which are taught across our curriculum in conjunction with the planning framework for pupils with SEND published by PSHE association. Similarly, Religious Education (RE) is also taught across our curriculum, for example, through our theme of Festivals.

See below for an example of our themes. 

Cycles	Autumn	Spring	Summer
Cycle A - 25/26	Myself and People	Festivals	Water
Cycle B - 26/27	Changes and new beginnings	The Weather	Living things