Planning is a key part of teaching. Without a coherent plan lessons may lack structure and direction. Long and medium term planning are an important part of this and in this rationale I hope to demonstrate that my planning does indeed have all of these qualities.
The first element to be considered when rationalising this scheme of work is whether or not it meets the needs of Key Stage 3 pupils. I believe that it does because the attainment focus is all within Key Stage 3. However, this is only the very simplest level by which we can measure this criterion. Firstly, we can also measure it by matching the scheme of work to the programme of study. If we look at this we can see that pupils have the opportunity to study all of these elements . The second way in which we could measure this criterion is by looking at the course content. I think that this course is very challenging. It asks pupils to engage with controversial and modern issues. Some might think that this is too difficult for pupils to understand. However, I disagree with this. In my experience of teaching pupils are keen to engage with issues that are current and relevant. These issues can even be quite complex but as long as the pupils are given the vocabulary and this is explained they are quite capable of discussing these issues and often show large degrees of insight. In this way I think that my scheme of work certainly meets the needs of Key Stage 3 pupils.
Of course, there may be some question as to whether this scheme as described above is only suitable for the more able pupils. However, in my experience of teaching this is not the case. It simply requires good differentiation for less able pupils to be engage with these topics and once again I think that teachers may be surprised to hear what insight pupils can show in these matters. Personally, I have always felt that it slightly patronising to assume that just because