Building An 'ASK' Curriculum

Introduction
At Grampian School we are endeavouring to build an ‘ASK’ Curriculum (Attitudes – Skills – Knowledge), with our highest values and best learning efforts focused on key attitudes and learning dispositions. The task idea is two-fold: to establish a pupil-staff research-action team that will:

(1) connect with highly effective people across a wide range of disciplines and life experiences to identify common dispositions behind exceptional achievement and translate them into a planned, incremental, attitudinal, curriculum framework couched in child-friendly terms;

(2) develop a pedagogy for teaching, assessing and nurturing these attitudes within a learning model based on Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy.

Progress to date
Applications for the team were invited from pupils following work on the attitudes and skills that would be required from members of such a team. Following a selection process the team members were appointed. Specific roles and responsibilities were discussed, negotiated and agreed with the team.

To generate a ‘quick win’ and help establish pupil motivation and develop momentum, the team used some existing contacts to secure an interview with a local high achiever (a successful businessman and contestant from ‘The Apprentice’).The team followed this up by defining the criteria of ‘achievement’. It was agreed that candidates for interview must have recognisably excelled at the highest levels in their field or in terms of life experience.Work then began on drawing up our ‘wish-list’ of high profile, ‘high-achievers’ against the agreed criteria and on devising a strategy for making contact with potential interviewees. Letters of introduction and invitation were drafted and refined whilst the team began researching potential candidates and finding contact details (particularly difficult for such high profile personalities!)

Where are we now?
Invitation letters have been sent out and we are in the process of following these first contacts up. Whilst we expect it to take some time for responses to come in, we have already had some early, encouraging success with Donna Kellogg (a Badminton Commonwealth Gold Medallist and World Championship Silver Medallist) meeting with the team at the start of March and a high profile member of the House of Lords agreeing to meet with the team in the near future.

The process is turning out to be longer than had originally been anticipated. We now expect to be able to arrange interviews with our invitees over the remainder of 2010. Improvement work targeted at adjusting our curriculum to reflect the research findings will likely take until the summer of 2011.

Comments from the team

• ‘I like being in the Research Team because I like finding out about how people have achieved a particular target they have set for themselves and what skills it takes to achieve that target’ (Josh, 8 yrs).
• ‘I like the chance we get to reflect on their lives and to build our lives up from what we’ve found out’ (Rae, 10 yrs).
• ‘Our team is hardworking and fun. Sometimes things and people are not always as they seem!’ (Ellen, 11yrs).

Chris Perkins
Grampian Primary School