Thrive 31 - Rethinking common curriculum as an opportunity to close the cognitive gap

Out of all the subjects in the common curriculum, I am in charge of three subjects that are examinable and can be used for progression to higher education. 

Preliminary observation is that mixing express, NA and NT students together in a common curriculum does have a positive effect on the learning behaviour of the NT students. However, how can we design the curriculum to close the curriculum gap?

Can we set the target that all NT students will take G2 D&T, Art and NFS and some NA students will take G3 D&T, Art and NFS?

How can we design a common curriculum that closes the cognitive gap of students by having much more improvement made by the NT students? How can we then close the metacognitive gaps of students by having a different learning experience for the Express students by taking the role of critical and constructive feedback provider for others and translating the feedback to internal feedback to set high expectations and learning how to regulate themselves to close this gap?

Express students will take G3 level of demand naturally, could there be an implicit curriculum of G4 where students act as "contributing citizens" by helping their classmates who did not have the same starting point as them and in the process develop other skills such as feedback literacy?

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