Getting started – AoLE leader guide
This page guides you through how to use the tools on Maestro to support AoLE leaders with an inspection. You may wish to bookmark this page to reference later.
Overview
It is important as an AoLE leader that you can articulate clearly about your curriculum – why things are taught and when they are taught. You need to understand the journey from when children come into your school to when they leave it. Maestro provides you with the toolbox for your curriculum so that you can adopt and adapt to personalise your curriculum so that it fits your local context, meets the needs of your children, and facilitates the chosen teaching styles your school has in place.
So how does Cwricwlwm Maestro empower you as an AoLE leader to be well equipped for a deep dive?
Ongoing support
This can be found in a number of places on the home screen:
- The Live Chat function in the bottom right-hand corner of the home page takes you through to our office between 8.00am and 5.00pm Monday to Thursday and 8.00am and 4.00pm on Fridays. Here you will be able to gain instant advice and support from a Curriculum Adviser (a real person, no automated bots!).
- The Help Centre in the left-hand menu on the home page contains many useful articles. This includes podcasts, blogs, and the latest research around curriculum. This will help you to speak knowledgeably about your curriculum and the rationale underpinning it. The Curriculum and Pedagogy Guidance section is especially helpful.
- The Messages List on the left-hand side of your home screen provides you with the latest news and updates from the Cornerstones team. As an AoLE leader, you are kept informed of any new projects or materials that have been released.
Curriculum Intent
To support this, the Design and Lead section located on your left-hand home page menu takes you into everything you will need.
In the Cwricwlwm statement there are statements from the Curriculum for Wales guidance documents, along with text boxes for you to complete, to help you think about where your Area of Learning fits into the wider curriculum offered by your school.
In View and compare projects, you can go through your Area of Learning from an AoLE leader perspective. Start off by selecting your area in the bar at the top of the page. Ensure that you set the filters for your school’s live curriculum.
This will load up the projects where your AoLE is the main driver for the acquisition of skills and knowledge or where there is some coverage for your AoLE within that project. It also enables you to see immediately the links made with other AoLEs and an overview of what the project is about. You can also “heart” projects and this will save these on your home page as favourites, providing you with a library of projects for your AoLE.
From this page, you can click onto a project and it will take you into the overview where you can see the content covered and switch between the statements of what matters and knowledge and skills being covered.
Again, you can see how your Area of Learning is linked to other areas of the curriculum and how it is being enriched through memorable experiences and texts. If you click 'View lessons and resources', then you will be able to see fully how the lessons unfolds across the four Cornerstones of Engage, Develop, Innovate and Express.
You can also look at each project from the point of view of 'AoLE' to see the lessons grouped in their AoLE rather than the whole project.
This page takes you into several other pages which will help you as an AoLE leader to:
- Talk about practical resources so that you can plan budgets for the year ahead and liaise with other AoLE leaders, class teachers and SLT to ensure that as a school you have everything needed to deliver the projects planned (or be aware of any adaptations you will make in advance). In 'Resources' you can see the specific materials produced by Cornerstones which can be used and adapted to deliver the lessons planned.
- Talk about the Literacy pack to show how other AoLEs are being used to deliver reading and writing opportunities, thus supporting with issues around crowded primary timetables (these are found in the sequenced projects only).
- Relate back to pedagogy and ambition, so there is access for all through scaffolding, use of resources, seating plans and additional adults.
- Add personalised content using the Lesson Builder; ideal for adding in further AoLE coverage or more bespoke content such as lessons linking to local interests or locations, or aspects from Pupil Voice input.
Coverage and progression
If you select Live Curriculum, then you have the opportunity to interrogate about Coverage and Progression.
On the Coverage screen you can select your area of learning and you can also filter for year groups and gaps in any what matters statements.
So that you can secure a picture of what you would expect to say if you were carrying out any monitoring work across school, you can check on this page to see what coverage should look like. You can then check this through book looks, lesson drop-ins, pupil discussions and learning walks. By clicking on any of the green lozenges containing numbers, a screen will appear detailing the lessons where that statement is expected to be taught. It also then informs you of the skills and knowledge being developed in that lesson.
For more information and support on any page, click the 'Instructions' in the top right-hand corner of your page. This will bring up an information box with further information.On the Progression page, you can see how objectives are sequenced and progressive across the years related to particular aspects.
If you click on 'Covered', you will see which projects cover the statement for that year group.
By clicking on the blue 'Lesson/s' button under each project, you can then see in which lessons you would expect to see this. Again, this equips you well for all monitoring activities and informs your overview of what is actually being taught across school and how well the children are accessing and retaining the knowledge and skills that have been planned.
AoLE lesson sequence
In AoLE lesson sequence you can set the tool bars at the top of the page to your curriculum area, your live curriculum and specific year group you wish to look at. This will bring up the projects so that you can see everything you need to know about the what matters statement, knowledge and skills being covered. You would also be able to see any adaptations to lessons made by teachers who have personalised the learning for their classes or made links to the local area, for example.
Curriculum Implementation
To ensure you can articulate around implementation, look at our Plan and Assess section in the left-hand menu.
In Class plans > Class plan details, you can select your live curriculum cycle and the year group (or class) you want to look at, based on the plans which were set up. This will bring up an overview of projects which, through the 'Options' drop-down, can also be copied for other classes delivering the same projects, so the class teachers can choose to personalise them differently. As well as being able to see the content overview for your Area of Learning, you will be able to see how this links to other areas of the curriculum.
By clicking on 'Options', you can change the page view to give you a format that is preferable for your purpose and personal taste. Below you can see examples of the different views: as table, grouped by project, or grouped by row.
Table view:
Grouped by project:
Grouped by row:
Actual coverage
In Actual coverage you will be able to see what has already been taught and when the remaining content is planned to be taught. Green lozenges indicate that a statement of what matters has been fully taught, an amber lozenge shows that a statement has been taught on at least one of the planned occasions and a red lozenge shows that there has been no coverage as yet of a particular statement.
By clicking on a lozenge relating to a particular project, you will be able to see details of the lessons taught and when. This is helpful in informing book looks and pupil discussions for your AoLE monitoring.
Track pupil progress
Going to Track pupil progress, by setting the school year, term, year group and AoLE (also LNF/DCF/DoL), you can gain an overview of how class teachers are judging attainment for their classes. This is something that you can triangulate through your AoLE leader monitoring and review activities.
You can click on the numbers in the 'Assumed attainment' column to see more specific details of the skills and knowledge that have been attained.
Curriculum Impact
In order to secure an overview of the impact of your school’s curriculum you can go into Analyse and Report in the left-hand menu. Here you will be able to access a number of reports to inform your overview of how well children are performing in your Area of Learning.
Class Attainment
In Class attainment you can set the filters along the top for year group and Area of Learning. This will provide an overview of how well each child is performing against each objective for that AoLE.
By hovering over any of the objectives lozenges to the left of the year group and statement, you can see how well the child has attained the skills and knowledge objectives. Having all this information at your fingertips as an AoLE leader will equip you well for any conversations with external inspectors or consultants.
Governor report
At some point, it is likely that you will be asked to present to your school’s Governing Body about your Area of Learning or that you may be required to meet with a Governor who has oversight of your AoLE to talk about provision in the school. The Governor Report is available to provide you with anonymised data that could be shared with governors so that they have an overview of specific groups and year groups and how they have achieved in the chosen AoLE throughout their time in school.
AoLE progression report
The AoLE progression report provides you with bar graph comparisons to show percentages of children who are on track and not on track. If you switch the option to show pupil names on, then you will be able to see which children are in each attainment group.
Summary
In summary, Maestro is your toolbox to enable you to understand fully what the coverage actually is in your school and know how it is taught. By using the tools we provide, you should understand any adaptations made by your school, such as in mixed-age classes, to ensure that the required content of all Areas of Learning are taught by the end of Y6 and that you know what the end goal is in Y6.
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