WHAT IS ‘NO LIMITS’?
Our unique No Limits curriculum is ambitious, enriching, broad and balanced. Designed to go beyond the traditional curriculum it combines the acquisition of knowledge with the development of power skills. Our students have regular opportunities to apply their learning and demonstrate their power skills in real world contexts. Engaging in learning in this way deepens understanding, and results in high levels of achievement as well as preparing pupils/students for an ever changing world.
THE NO LIMITS CURRICULUM
Students are taught the full National Curriculum, and this is enhanced through several different learning approaches. These are designed to challenge and engage students allowing them to acquire and apply knowledge in single discipline subjects as well as through Applied Learning.
APPLIED LEARNING
Applied learning is the real-world application of knowledge and power skills that includes relevant, practical experiences. This can be through:
- Problem-Based Learning: Students work on real-world problems, developing solutions through research and critical thinking.
- Experiential Learning: Students participate in activities like experiments, simulations, and fieldwork.
- Project-Based Learning: Students undertake projects that require applying their knowledge and skills to produce a tangible outcome.
- Work-Based Learning: students gain experience in a real-world professional setting.
- Service Learning: Combines community service with academic learning, emphasising civic responsibility and reflection.
WHY IS APPLIED LEARNING IMPORTANT TO US?
- Ensures our curriculum remains relevant and evolving
- Enables students to engage with people, place and processes
- Enhances understanding and retention by deepening learning (relevant/engaging)
- Can be differentiated easily
- Makes learning more purposeful
THE CREATOR SPACE
The ‘No Limits’ Curriculum aims to give all students the opportunity to thrive, to become complex problem solvers and to be highly effective communicators. The intention behind our Creator Space is for students to work collaboratively using creative solutions to explore areas across the curriculum from science, technology, engineering and maths to art, design and English. One of the goals of the Creator Space is to instill the creator mindset in students through creative experiences while simultaneously building power skills. The Creator Space is for artists and designers of the future to help immerse, involve and inspire them.
The expectation is for each academy to follow the ‘No Limits’ curriculum outline and philosophy whilst also putting its own personal stamp on their own contextual curriculum. The shared, collective curriculum enables sufficient commonality of subjects, topics and assignments to enable Trust moderation and the raising of standards.
What are Power Skills?
As part of Aspirations Academies Trust, we have used extensive research undertaken by the Hewlett Packard Foundation – and developed further by the Deeper Learning Foundation – as our starting point for determining what robust learning progressions for skill development looks like.
The five Power Skill areas are:
- Communication
- Collaboration
- Critical Thinking
- Complex Problem Solving
- Character (Learning how to Learn)
Every skill is broken down into several strands; each of which has a long-term transfer goal. Staff at Magna Academy collaboratively developed and defined learning progressions, which provide observable performance indicators as to what progressive development toward each long-term transfer goal looks like.
