If you are a primary teacher in Scotland, you might have heard of Oak National Academy, it’s a free teaching resource platform for primary and secondary teachers in England.
I recently met with the team at Oak National Academy to learn more about the platform and how teachers are using it. One question I was particularly interested in was whether the resources could be useful for teachers working with the Curriculum for Excellence (CFE) in Scotland.
Their answer was positive. Although Oak National Academy has been developed for the English National Curriculum, many of the concepts taught in primary schools are similar. With a little professional judgement, many of the resources can be used by primary teachers in Scotland to support planning, provide inspiration or help build subject knowledge.
What is Oak National Academy?
Oak National Academy is a completely free website that provides curriculum resources for primary and secondary schools in England.
Originally created during the COVID-19 pandemic to support remote learning, it has since grown into a huge library of curriculum materials covering a wide range of primary subjects.
What makes Oak National Academy stand out is that it does not just offer individual lesson ideas. It provides complete curriculum sequences, showing how learning is built over time through units of work and individual lessons.
What could Scottish teachers find useful?
It’s completely free
Every lesson, curriculum plan and teaching resource is free to access, making it an excellent place to explore new ideas or support your planning.
It makes curriculum progression easy to see
One feature I particularly like is being able to view an entire unit of work and see how learning develops across lessons. You can also explore how topics progress across different year groups, which can be really helpful when thinking about progression and curriculum design.
The Key Learning Points make it easy to check against CfE
Every lesson begins with a set of Key Learning Points. These give a clear summary of what pupils are expected to learn, making it quick to compare the lesson with your chosen Experiences and Outcomes.
Rather than reading through an entire lesson first, you can quickly decide whether the learning is relevant for your class.
A few things to remember
Oak was not designed for CfE, so it’s always worth checking that a lesson matches the learning you want pupils to achieve.
Think of the resources as a starting point rather than something to follow exactly. You may want to adapt examples, vocabulary or activities to better suit your learners and your school’s curriculum.
My thoughts
One thing I really appreciated after speaking with the Oak National Academy team was seeing how much thought has gone into making the curriculum easy to navigate. Being able to view learning across a whole unit or year group is a feature I think many teachers will find useful.
Oak National Academy has high-quality resources that Scottish teachers can explore, adapt and use to support the learning they are planning.
It is certainly one website that is worth knowing about and hopefully it can help reduce your workload next year.
Joanna
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