Impact7th November 2022

English Mastery takes legwork out of curriculum planning

Ark Curriculum Plus is a non-profit organisation, dedicated to supporting teachers in providing consistent, high-quality education to all students. English Mastery is one of their curriculum programmes.

Ark John Archer Primary AcademyArk Curriculum Plus

English Mastery provides a knowledge-rich curriculum, aiming to help teachers establish students’ progress and effectively plan English lessons throughout Key Stage 3.

Thom Graves, teacher at Ark John Archer Primary Academy, talks about his experience with the pilot programme…

“In my early days of teaching, a decade ago, I threw everything at the wall to see what stick. I would waste time formatting Word documents – so much time lost to experimenting with colours, layout and other labour-intensive tasks. It was stressful having to plan units of work, not knowing the content that well or the pace you needed to move at.

“With English Mastery, someone without a full timetable of lessons has sat down and done that legwork for me. So now, I can use my time to think about the intellectual preparation of ‘How can I make this accessible to the children? Which part of the lessons do I want to keep and what provision shall I adjust for this group?’ So now my time is purposefully spent taking ownership of the lesson plans and thinking critically about what will work for this school.

“It’s improved my life-work balance. I work with something that’s established and fine tune it to my children. After ten years in teaching, I have been privileged to be a part of several education programmes, and English Mastery is the right balance between structure and freedom to innovate. English Mastery’s heavy lifting makes me feel like I’m starting the game three nil up.”