This issue's problem: Amir Timur is very uncertain about his Year 7 teaching within a competency-based curriculum.

Amir has just returned from the induction day at his second placement school and is very worried about the Year 7 curriculum he has to teach. The history, geography and RE departments are working together this year to offer a more integrated Year 7 curriculum, intended both to ease the transition from primary school and to foster more independent approaches to learning. The students therefore have eight lessons a week with the same teacher, and each six-week unit is focused on a single theme, drawing on all three subjects and building towards a substantial final project. Inspired by the RSA's ‘Opening Minds' programme, the new approach emphasizes students' awareness of the strategies that they are using to access and make sense of new information and ideas, and encourages them to reflect on the ways in which they work individually and in groups...