Assembly & Tutor Time
Tutor Time Programme
The programme ensures that every student experiences a consistent personal development curriculum, led by their tutor and supported by their Faculty Director and Faculty Coordinator, as well as the Academy Leadership Team. Each week tutor groups in Years 7 to 10 will have a session of:
- Literacy
- Assembly
- Healthy Harris
- PSHE/Careers and Skills
- Citizenship
The Year 10 and Year 11 curriculum have dedicated Citizenship lessons.
Tutor Time begins at 08:30 every morning. During this 30 minute period, Tutors will begin each day with DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) before delivering the appropriate activity for that day.
Each week during the literacy session, tutors will discuss key themes and topics arising from the literature consumed during their daily DEAR.
For one day each week, tutor groups will attend an assembly in place of Tutor Time. These are delivered by faculty. The assembly will cover either a topic from current affairs, or follow our daily programme.
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arts | Assembly | Healthy Harris | Literacy | PSHE/Careers & Skills | Citizenship |
| Humanities | Citizenship | Assembly | Healthy Harris | Literacy | PSHE/Careers & Skills |
| Maths & Commerce | PSHE/Careers & Skills | Citizenship | Assembly | Healthy Harris | Literacy |
| Science & PE | Healthy Harris | Literacy | PSHE/Careers & Skills | Citizenship | Assembly |
Assembly Programme
Assemblies are an opportunity for students to come together and learn together about a variety of themes. Assemblies are hosted by the Faculty Director, and led by a wide range of staff and students. Assemblies often begin by celebrating successes over the past week within the faculty. In any given year, assemblies will focus on a wide variety of themes such as:
- British values
- LGBTQ+
- Women in STEM
- Black History
- Contextual Safeguarding Issues
- Life Beyond School
- SEND 'Who are we?'
Each assembly links to our wider personal development curriculum, often introducing, developing or building upon content studied in Tutor Time and Citizenship lessons.
Healthy Harris
Healthy Harris is one strand of our Personal Development Curriculum which equips our students with the knowledge of safeguard issues within school, wider life, and our community. We have carefully sequenced our Healthy Harris Curriculum around these three themes:
- Food and Exercise
- Safeguarding Boosters
- Mindfulness and Wellbeing Practice
The Healthy Harris strand is our cross-curricular approach to health and wellbeing, encompassing, safeguarding, physical fitness, nutrition and diet and mental health. Delivered through tutor time, Healthy Harris incorporates the three themes above to ensure students feel safe, understand the importance of routines and are aware of where they can get further support.
Implementation – Healthy Harris Lessons
The core Healthy Harris sessions are implemented once a week during a 30-minute tutor time session. The Healthy Harris curriculum is further developed and enhanced through the Academy’s assembly programme and our thematic days.
Healthy Harris is our HAPU way of ensuring the culture of safeguarding is embedded within the Academy ensuring students feel safe and supported. Safeguarding boosters can range from an array of different topics which reflect Keeping Children Safe in Education and focuses upon our contextual risks. For example, our safeguarding boosters focus on Domestic Abuse and CCE/County Lines. It is essential students know how to recognises forms of harm, the signs, and symptoms but most importantly for us at HAPU, it is the building trust with our students so students feel confident in making disclosures so we can help prevent students from harm.
Through our mindfulness and wellbeing sessions, we also aim to ensure students become resilient in the face of adversity and ensure they are equipped with the tools to deal with day-to-day life and the challenges that may come throughout their life. Finally, we look at Food and Exercise sessions to understand the link between physical health and mental health in order to ensure students know the benefits of regular exercise and healthy eating with regards to their wellbeing.
Impact
Each half term, students are set a quiz on Show My Homework to test their knowledge and check their understanding of safeguarding topics. The quiz is analysed after completion which allows us to have confidence in students’ understanding and close any knowledge gaps which may have been identified.
