A week ago I shared a Knowledge Assessment on Twitter and thought I would follow it up with a brief blog on the role knowledge plays for me as we create our curriculums here at Brighton College Vietnam.

We are in the process of building a curriculum so quite rightly, everything we do is a work in development. As we plan for, teach and reflect upon the units, the core knowledge we want to communicate in each unit is becoming clearer and more focused.

In fact, because of our context, we stripped back our original plans and, linked to the IB, decided to focus on one ‘concept’ or one form per unit. So in Year 7 we have

Unit 1: Novel: Concept of Character

Unit 2: Mythology: Concept of narrative

Unit 3: What is a poem?  What is a media text?

Unit 4: What is a drama text?

For each unit we wanted a Knowledge Organiser to summarise the key knowledge content linked to the concept or the form. The Knowledge Organisers we arrived with were far too complex so again these have been stripped back.

The Knowledge Organisers are divided into key sections and are phrased using a Question and Answer format. This is great for self-quizzing and also for getting parents involved. One of my goals would be to have the Knowledge Organisers translated into Vietnamese so that those parents who do not speak English can still get involved with the quizzing of the Knowledge Organiser.  Before I joined the school, my Head of Department encouraged me to use visuals to accompany the Q and As and my next step will be to ensure that these visuals are also embedded within our workbooks and powerpoints at relevant points across the unit so that they become very familiar to pupils.

However, a Knowledge Organiser in itself is no use. The key knowledge not only has to be taught but it has to be returned to revised and embedded.

So there are three ways in which I do this.

1. Every lesson. I am quite a boring teacher, and often feel like I could mix my practice up, but I start every lesson with 4-5 recap questions.

The first is always a vocabulary question given our context and high EAL need. And then the questions are focused on retention from last lesson, Unit 2 and Unit 1.  This means core knowledge is constantly being revisited and retested.

2. A weekly blooket. I have to say I am now converted to blooket after a very long stubborn refusal. The same Q and As from the Knowledge Organiser are inputted into Blooket and every week, for the final ten minutes of our topic lesson pupils complete a blooket.  I particularly like Gold Rush because it is individual and you get a report on how many questions pupils answered and how many they got right.  However, pupils also really like the team challenges too.  For the winning person or team, I award a House Point, which is part of our rewards system.  They see it as fun, I see it as them revising core prior knowledge.

In preparation for the weekly blooket, part of pupils’ homework is to revise the core knowledge – this can be done using the Knowledge Organiser but I also use Quizlet, where I have transferred the Q and A from the Knowledge Organiser into flashcards.  The pupils love the match exercise and this is a way of engaging them with the learning of this core knowledge.  To aid pupils I create a termly Quizlet schedule with one core section from the Knowledge Organiser to learn and then others to retain.

3. A termly knowledge test. Finally, if we put value on something, in my opinion it is worth assessing. So every term pupils sit a Knowledge Test.  This is knowledge from the knowledge organizer, which they are quizzed on every lesson and weekly via Blooket and can revise using Quizlet so I always emphasise they should be low stakes if the learning has been done well.  They are also cumulative in nature so as the year goes on knowledge from each unit is tested to ensure the foundational knowledge each year has been learnt.  The results of the test are obviously very useful in determining which knowledge is secure and which knowledge needs more attention.  These tests also sit alongside either a reading or writing assessment each term.

For me, as we write, build, develop and review our curriculum, it is about establishing systems that ensure great coverage and great learning and ensuring that these systems are clear, simple and become routine for our pupils. Hopefully we are on the right path for how we approach the embedding of our foundational knowledge in Year 7.