REAL School Budapest · June 2026

The D2RHandbook

Dream-to-Reality: a developmental curriculum for regenerative entrepreneurship.

What does the world need?

D2R was designed backwards from our answer: young people capable of regenerative entrepreneurship.

REAL School began with a question more fundamental than which curriculum to adopt or which teaching method to favour: What does the world need?

Humanity is in a precarious period. A growth-dependent, extractive economy is colliding with finite limits, and several planetary boundaries have already been crossed. Many of the problems we now face were produced, managed or normalised by highly educated people; industrial-era schooling was part of how the world got here. D2R is one attempt to educate differently.

Social fragmentation and rapidly advancing artificial intelligence add further uncertainty. We do not know exactly how these pressures will combine. We do know that young people will need more than the ability to reproduce what adults already know. They will need the judgement to decide what matters, the competence to act under uncertainty, the ability to work with people unlike themselves, and the courage to bring worthwhile things into being.

We therefore design for a particular kind of person: caring, capable and able to affect the world around them. We call that person a regenerative entrepreneur.

One who undertakes

Entrepreneurship here is broader than starting a company. Its older meaning is more useful: one who undertakes. A regenerative entrepreneur notices a need or possibility, understands enough of the system to act responsibly, organises people and resources, makes decisions under constraint, and accepts that the quality of the outcome will be tested beyond school. The value created may be commercial, civic, cultural, ecological or social.

The term also carries an ethical commitment. Capability alone can produce extraction, manipulation or harm. D2R asks students to create value while considering who benefits, who bears the cost, what happens to the living world, and what may continue after the project ends.

What regenerative means

Regenerative action increases the capacity of people, communities and living systems to become healthier over time. It reaches beyond reducing harm or repairing one piece of damage towards creating conditions that can keep improving after the original intervention ends.

This is a demanding standard. Most useful school projects will sit somewhere below it. We use the continuum as a design tool, then describe the level of impact the evidence supports. A project can be informed by regenerative principles without earning the claim that it regenerated a system.

system health

holds the line

ConventionalGreenSustainableRestorativeRegenerative

Healthier for whom?

Benefits and burdens are rarely shared evenly.

Over what period?

A short-term gain can create a longer-term cost.

What continues?

Endurance needs ownership, routines and resources.

What evidence would change our view?

Good intentions do not establish impact.

The continuum helps students compare likely effects and question what may endure. Adapted from Reed and 7group (2009).

The D2R arc

Dream-to-Reality is built around a simple arc. Students imagine a worthwhile possibility, bring it into the world, and take responsibility for what follows. The third move changes the meaning of the first two. A project is unfinished if nobody knows who will maintain it, evaluate it, adapt it or close it.

Dream itSense what matters and imagine what could be better.

Build itTurn an idea into something useful under genuine constraints.

Steward itTake responsibility for what continues, changes or ends.

Dream it. Build it. Steward it. The words are simple enough to remember and demanding enough to organise a curriculum.

The future is not wholly out of our hands. Schools cannot solve every problem facing the world, and children should not be burdened with that fantasy. They can learn that their judgement matters, that action has consequences, and that they are capable of contributing to the health of the people and places around them.

Designing backwards from the mission

The purpose came first. The curriculum, project processes and assessment system were built to serve it.

REAL School’s driving question is:

What kind of education is needed to inspire and empower a generation to dream and build a beautiful world?

Our school-wide response is represented by six curricular commitments: Academics, Nature, Smart technology, Wellbeing, Entrepreneurship and Regeneration. Together they form ANSWER.

ANSWER maps the school-wide curriculum: Academics, Nature, Smart technology, Wellbeing, Entrepreneurship and Regeneration.

ANSWER maps the whole school. D2R carries particular responsibility for entrepreneurship and for applying regeneration, humanities and literacy through projects. Mathematics, science, music, language acquisition and other sequenced subjects retain their own courses. Nature is foundational in the lower school and remains present through fieldwork, excursions and place-based study. Wellbeing and smart technology run across the curriculum.

Doing the mission properly

Regenerative entrepreneurship was the starting point. The knowledge question followed because the mission is meaningless if students are busy, inspired and publicly visible while learning little.

Project-based learning can produce beautiful exhibitions, confident pitches and memorable events with surprisingly thin understanding underneath. Group products can hide individual gaps. Adults can rescue weak plans. A public audience can applaud effort without knowing whether the work is any good.

Knowledge-heavy teaching has its own failure mode. Students can remember an answer long enough to pass a test, never use it, and spend years unable to see what their learning is for. Some become bored out of their minds. Others conclude that school success has little connection to usefulness, judgement or agency.

D2R is our attempt to avoid both failures. Projects begin from the mission and a genuine purpose. Teachers then plan the knowledge, model the practices, set criteria, arrange feedback and make individual learning visible. Dedicated subject courses build the sequences that projects cannot be trusted to supply.

D2R at a glance

Age range5–14, from Water Dragons to the Light Dragons capstone.

Core purposeDevelop regenerative entrepreneurship through increasingly consequential work.

ProcessesSEEDS for Water and Air Dragons and the Light capstone; the Builder Process for Earth, Fire and Metal Dragons.

CurriculumRegeneration, entrepreneurship, selected humanities and literacy, supported by dedicated subject courses.

Experiential learningA full Wednesday morning every week is protected for excursions, fieldwork, experts and learning in the city. Lower-school children spend Wednesday outdoors in nature-based learning, alongside further outdoor time across the week.

EvidenceKnowledge and skill are judged against clear criteria; dispositions and values are observed across time and situations.

Budapest is part of the curriculum

D2R is not confined to a project room. Students encounter the people, places and systems they are trying to understand. Wednesday morning is protected across the school for experiential learning: visits, fieldwork, interviews, outdoor inquiry and work with practitioners. Fire, Metal and Light Dragons use this time for recurring excursions and partner work. Earth Dragons combine project time with outdoor sessions. Water and Air Dragons learn outside every Wednesday and spend further time in nature throughout the week.

Experience alone does not guarantee learning. Teachers prepare the knowledge students need before and during an excursion, give them a clear purpose for observing or gathering evidence, and return to the experience afterwards through discussion, writing, mapping, making and retrieval. The city provides consequence and memory; curriculum turns the experience into understanding.

How D2R works

Authentic work needs a genuine purpose, taught knowledge, meaningful constraints, revision and responsibility.

What makes the work authentic

A strong project begins with a need, question or possibility that exists independently of the school. Students meet the people, place or system involved. They create something intended to be used, considered or acted upon. Time, money, materials, ethics, expertise and competing interests constrain the work. An audience with knowledge or a stake in the outcome can respond meaningfully. Students improve the work. Where continuation makes sense, they prepare for it.

The scale remains developmentally appropriate. A younger class may improve one habitat, establish a care routine or make a guide for the children who follow. Older students may propose an intervention in a school system, build a small venture or work with a civic partner. The purpose has to exist beyond generating a mark, and somebody beyond the teacher needs a reason to care about quality.

We use four project criteria, represented by REAL.

The REAL criteria guide project design: Relevant, Entrepreneurial, Art-filled and Lifelong.

The four definitions below show what each criterion asks students and teachers to protect in the work.

Relevant

The project addresses a need, question or opportunity connected to people and place. Relevance is established with those affected.

Entrepreneurial

Students create value under constraint. They test assumptions, make trade-offs and bring something into being.

Art-filled

Craft, beauty, story and emotional intelligence matter. Appearance cannot disguise weak thinking, and function is no excuse for careless work.

Lifelong

The work should strengthen practices that remain useful: goal-setting, collaboration, feedback, reflection, self-management and stewardship.

Two processes

The programme changes shape across childhood. Water and Air Dragons use SEEDS, a cyclical process rooted in close attention, place and care. Earth, Fire and Metal Dragons use the Builder Process, which makes the sequence of a term project explicit. Light Dragons return to SEEDS for the year-long capstone with greater independence, abstraction and public responsibility.

SEEDS is the cyclical lower-school process: Sense, Envision, Experiment, Design to Last and Share.

SEEDS is cyclical and responsive to what younger children notice in a place. The stage descriptions below show how attention becomes possibility, experiment, care and shared learning.

SEEDS stages

Sense

Sense. The children attune to their place: they observe, handle, wonder, and build a relationship with what is alive around them. What is here? What has changed since the autumn? What keeps catching their attention? This stage is unhurried by design — it can take a whole term — because everything that follows grows from what the children genuinely notice.

Envision

Envision. Wondering turns into possibility. The children begin to imagine how something could be better, and to ask "what if?" — what if we could help the frogs, look after this corner, make this place kinder?

Experiment

Experiment. They try things: making, planting, building, testing, and adapting when something does not work. Failure is part of it, and so is the discovery that effort changes things.

Design to Last

Design to Last. This is where stewardship lives for the youngest. The children turn to the question that runs through the whole programme — who will look after this? — and create simple routines of care, teaching others and preparing to hand the work on so the difference they have made continues.

Share. They tell the story and celebrate it, showing others what they did, what they noticed, and what they are proud of.

SEEDS is cyclical. Share opens another round of sensing; Experiment can return to Envision; Design to Last may expose a problem that needs further experimentation. Water and Air teachers hold most of the design. Light students carry far more of it themselves.

From Earth Dragons onwards, project work becomes more explicitly staged. The Builder Process gives students and teachers a shared route through immersion, making, revision, public response and stewardship.

The Builder Process makes the full arc of project work explicit, from immersion and knowledge-building to revision, public response and stewardship.

The definitions below explain what students and teachers are doing at each point in the process. Knowledge-building, feedback and reflection continue across the stages.

The Builder Process stages

Immerse

Immerse. Students get to know the problem — and, where it makes sense, the system that holds that problem in place — through excursions, meeting the people affected, and observing how things actually work. Here they begin building the foundational knowledge the project needs, and study what quality looks like by examining strong, average and weak examples and working out together what separates them. The driving question takes shape by the end of this stage. Immerse is where knowledge-building starts, but not where it stops: rather than front-loading everything at the beginning, the project keeps building and deepening knowledge as the need arises — and much of the underpinning understanding is built in parallel in the Regeneration course, as Section 5 described.

Dream

Dream. Before settling on anything, students generate many possibilities — asking "how might we?", thinking widely, drawing where useful on how nature solves similar problems.

Plan

Plan. They turn a chosen idea into a workable plan: roles, a timeline, the resources and constraints, and a realistic view of what might go wrong.

Do. They build, make and produce — prototyping, testing, and picking up the specific skills and knowledge they need just as the need arises.

Re-Do

Re-Do. This is the stage most schooling skips, and it is where quality is made. Work goes through cycles of critique and expert feedback, measured against the success criteria the class built in Immerse — feedback tied to explicit, shared criteria rather than to opinion — and students revise through multiple drafts, attending to craft and beauty rather than settling for a first attempt.

Share. The work meets an audience: an expo, an exhibition, a panel, with genuine questions from people who care about the outcome.

Steward

Steward. Most project work ends at the applause. D2R does not. In Steward, students see that the work continues — naming who will carry it on, creating what is needed to hand it over, establishing routines of care — and reflect on what they have learned and who they are becoming. This is the stage that makes a project regenerative rather than a one-off, and, with Share's authentic audience, it is what most sets the process apart from ordinary project work.

Appendix A retains the group assignment, common twelve-week cadence and teacher planning checks.

How teachers create quality

The process diagram is a route through the work. Teaching happens within it. Educators explain, model, demonstrate, read with students, organise guided practice, check understanding and respond to what the evidence shows. Fieldwork, interviews, studio critique, group planning and individual writing are chosen because the learning and project need them.

Revision matters. Students examine strong and weak examples, help clarify success criteria, receive feedback from teachers, peers and relevant experts, and make substantial changes. The Re-Do stage protects time for this work. A first attempt presented attractively is still a first attempt.

Reflection also runs through the project. Students consider what they understand, what remains weak, how the group is functioning, which assumptions have failed and what their next move should be. The most useful reflection changes the work while there is still time to improve it.

Capability, values and agency

A competency mobilises knowledge, skill, disposition and value to meet a complex demand.

The OECD describes competency as the mobilisation of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values. REAL uses disposition for the part of that account described as attitudes because our curriculum concerns tendencies that become visible in action. We therefore plan capability through four connected components.

Knowledge

Facts, concepts, procedures, cases, vocabulary and models. Knowledge includes knowing that something is so and understanding why it matters.

Skill

Knowing how: the embodied capacity to perform, built through modelling, guided practice, use, feedback and repetition.

Disposition

A pattern of action made up of ability, inclination and sensitivity to the occasion.

Value

A set of normative judgements and enacted commitments about what is worth doing and what matters, especially when the right course is unclear.

What makes a disposition different

Perkins, Jay and Tishman describe a disposition through three elements: ability, inclination and sensitivity. A student may know how to seek useful feedback and understand why it helps, yet still avoid it. The missing element may be the inclination to expose unfinished work or the sensitivity to recognise that this is the moment when feedback is needed.

AbilityCan I do it?

InclinationAm I disposed to do it?

SensitivityDo I notice when it is called for?

The ability element is genuine knowing-how. The handbook does not build a wall between knowledge in the head and competence in the body. Skill and embodied ability are forms of knowing. The philosophical question of whether knowing-how can ultimately be reduced to knowing-that does not need to be settled for teachers to plan well.

Values guide judgement

A value names a standard; a disposition names the pattern of action that standard tends to produce. Care may guide a decision about how a partner is treated. The disposition appears in whether the student notices the partner’s needs, seeks consent, follows through and adjusts when the relationship requires it.

REAL School’s values are PEACE: Passion, Equity, Authenticity, Care and Excellence.

Diversity sits within Equity. Diversity can exist without equity; equity cannot exist without diversity. The fuller account appears in Empowering PEACE and Regeneration.

How we use evidence

Knowledge and skill

A product or performance can be judged against a clear criterion. The judgement remains bounded to the target, context and evidence.

Dispositions and values

Educators observe and record patterns across time, people and situations. They do not score care, courage or equity on a task rubric. Turning care into a performance for points tends to corrode the thing we are trying to cultivate.

Quality and support are recorded separately. A strong product completed with substantial prompting remains strong work; it does not yet establish independent performance. Keeping both records gives teachers a more useful account of what the student can do and what support should change next.

Agency grows through competence

Agency is the growing capacity to act intentionally and effectively, alone and with others, within the constraints of a situation. Autonomy can create space for agency, but freedom without knowledge or practice often leaves the already confident in charge and the novice adrift. D2R combines guidance, psychological safety, meaningful choice and demanding practice. Support changes as competence grows.

The full ANSWER architecture, developmental matrix and planning questions are in Appendix C.

Building knowledge that lasts

Projects follow the logic of a problem. Curriculum has to notice what students do not yet know and make important learning return.

D2R begins from a worthwhile purpose, then plans the knowledge needed to pursue it. The aim is neither activity without substance nor content detached from use.

Three structures of development

Some knowledge is strongly cumulative. Later learning depends on earlier learning in a relatively ordered way. Phonics, much of mathematics, grammar, scientific technique and musical technique have this character.

Other knowledge becomes more powerful through recurrence. Concepts such as system, power, evidence, change over time and trade-off deepen as students meet them in different cases and compare one context with another.

Dispositions develop through enacted practice across situations. Their ability component includes practical knowing; inclination and sensitivity determine whether that ability is brought into use.

Different knowledge structures call for different curricular treatment. The categories are tendencies, not rigid bins into which whole subjects can be dropped.

Plan backwards, teach forwards

Understanding by Design offers a useful discipline. Begin with what students should be able to do, identify the understanding that performance requires, and specify the knowledge that makes the understanding possible. Teaching then moves forwards: build knowledge, organise it through concepts, practise the relevant moves and use them in increasingly demanding work.

Curriculum design works backwards from a worthwhile performance to the understanding and knowledge it requires. Teaching then builds forwards.

The concept spine

Project topics change. A curriculum needs threads that return. D2R uses a concept spine across humanities and regeneration so that a project on food, a project on a school system and a project on civic material flows contribute to a connected education.

Systemsrelationships, flows, feedback and leverage

Powerwho decides, who benefits and who is excluded

Change over timeorigins, continuity, causation and consequence

Trade-offs and scarcitylimits, opportunity cost and competing goods

Evidence and perspectivehow claims are warranted and accounts differ

Fairness and equitydistribution, justice, voice and responsibility

The concepts do not replace content. “Power” becomes meaningful through a particular government, institution, community or relationship. A modern-history case about the mechanisation of farming can build knowledge about technology, labour, land and production while deepening cause, power, trade-off and change over time. A later project can revisit those concepts through another case and ask where the comparison breaks.

What D2R builds and what stays sequenced

Mathematics, science, music and language acquisition retain dedicated programmes because their prerequisite structures need planned sequence and sufficient practice. D2R applies learning from those courses when the project genuinely calls for it. It carries selected humanities, entrepreneurship, regeneration and substantial literacy because those domains gain strength through purpose, comparison, public communication and repeated use.

Literacy still requires explicit teaching. Students read substantive texts, build background knowledge, examine how the texts work, practise sentence and paragraph craft, plan and revise extended writing, and rehearse speaking. A public purpose gives the work reason; it does not teach the craft by itself.

Experience, memory and return

Excursions and fieldwork create vivid episodic memories. Remembering the day is not the same as retaining the explanatory knowledge. Teachers return to important ideas through retrieval, discussion, writing, concept maps, low-stakes quizzes, Hippo practice and comparison with a later case. Recurrence is planned. A familiar word appearing twice does not establish transfer.

The full knowledge architecture, humanities rationale, retrieval apparatus and planning sequence are in Appendix D.

A programme that grows with the child

The purpose remains coherent from five to fourteen. The form changes with development, experience and growing responsibility.

A five-year-old and a fourteen-year-old are not doing easier and harder versions of the same task. Their relationships with language, time, abstraction, peers, adults and responsibility differ. The programme changes with them.

◉Waterage 5SEEDS

≈Air6–7SEEDS

◆Earth8–10Builder

▲Fire10–12Builder

✦Metal12–13Builder

☀Light13–14SEEDS capstone

The purpose remains coherent while the form, scale, abstraction and student responsibility change.

The table below translates that journey into age range, timetable provision and the developmental character of the work.

Learning group	Band · ages	D2R time	Developmental character
Water Dragons	A · 5	Woven through the week; Wednesday outdoors	Wonder, play, story, first-hand encounter with living things and first acts of care.
Air Dragons	A · 6–7	Woven through the week; Wednesday outdoors	Belonging, noticing, hands-on making and the earliest habit of seeing a problem and acting on it.
Earth Dragons	B · 8–10	About 240 minutes each week plus outdoor and Wednesday experiential sessions	The bridge into structured projects, explicit criteria and sustained revision.
Fire Dragons	C · 10–12	About 240 minutes each week plus Wednesday excursions	Systems thinking, recurring stewardship and an ecological, economic and social arc.
Metal Dragons	D · 12–13	About 370 minutes each week plus Wednesday excursions	More abstract systems, ventures, civic work and harder trade-offs.
Light Dragons	D · 13–14	About 370 minutes each week plus Wednesday excursions and partner work	A year-long regenerative action capstone in Budapest.

Water and Air Dragons: the roots

The work begins with attention. Children return to the same outdoor places, notice what changes, develop language for what they encounter, and take small acts of care. Teachers plan rich environments, stories, materials and experiences, then use professional judgement to deepen an inquiry. Documentation captures language, choices, emerging knowledge, collaboration and patterns of care.

Earth Dragons: the bridge

Earth Dragons learn to hold a project across several weeks, understand explicit stages, work towards shared criteria, take part in structured critique and return to a product after the initial excitement has passed. The teacher defines much of the territory, chooses the knowledge, organises encounters and models the moves. Students make meaningful decisions within that structure.

Fire and Metal Dragons: widening systems

Fire Dragons use a two-year rotation. System Stewards begins every year so returning students can teach newer students, inspect what endured and carry a school system forwards. Metal Dragons work with supply chains, venture decisions, civic systems and distributional effects. The demands rise because knowledge, judgement and stamina have grown.

Light Dragons: the capstone

Light Dragons spend the year on the Regenerative Action Project. Teams choose a city problem, validate the need with those affected, work with a mentor, test a proposal, implement it, examine what happened and prepare a responsible continuation or closure. SEEDS returns at a mature scale.

Age bands guide planning. They do not set limits on an individual child. Teachers adjust support, access, roles, communication demands and routes to contribution while preserving the purpose and quality of the work.

D2R in practice

The programme becomes clear when the abstractions resolve into projects, products, teaching and evidence.

Upper-school projects move through three recurring lenses: ecological, economic, and social or civic. The lenses organise emphasis across the year while keeping the whole system in view.

Ecologicalliving systems and limits

The project lenses change the emphasis without separating economy, society and the living world.

Fire Dragons follow a two-year rotation. System Stewards opens Term 1 every year because each cohort inherits a school system, learns from the students who have already cared for it, and improves it before handing it on. Years A and B then diverge in Terms 2 and 3. Metal Dragons complete three projects across one year. Light Dragons devote the whole year to the Regenerative Action Project, the culmination of D2R.

The project sequence

Fire · every year · Term 1System Stewards

Improve and hand on a school living system.

Fire · Year A · Term 2Hearts & Hands

Create value for a cause and understand the money.

Fire · Year A · Term 3PEACE by Design

Use story and restorative practice to explore conflict and repair.

Fire · Year B · Term 2Leave It Better

Plan and fund an expedition that contributes to a place.

Fire · Year B · Term 3Fair Share

Use art to make fairness, representation and belonging visible.

Metal · Term 1Foodprint

Trace food systems and establish regenerative growing.

Metal · Term 2Worth Making

Build and test a venture that meets a genuine need.

Metal · Term 3Circular City

Investigate a local material flow and attempt a civic intervention.

Light · whole year · culminating projectRegenerative Action Project

Take a Budapest problem from inquiry through action, public communication and stewardship.

The cards show the complete upper-school sequence. The sections below first open one project in detail, then bring the other projects and their assessed learning targets together in one place.

A project up close: System Stewards

Driving question: How do we improve the living systems our school runs on, and pass them on better than we found them?

System Stewards is the first Fire Dragons project every year. Students take responsibility for one system the school depends on — water, energy, food or waste. They learn how the system works, inspect the evidence left by the previous cohort, choose a bounded improvement, put it into practice and prepare the next group to continue.

Purpose

Make systems thinking cumulative and show students that stewardship means returning to work after the launch.

What students do

Trace parts and flows, gather baseline evidence, map feedback loops, compare possible interventions, build an improvement, measure what happened and create a stewardship record.

What students learn

Systems mapping, human–environment interaction, opportunity spotting, evidence-based argument, collaboration, maintenance and handover.

Why it repeats

Every cohort includes returning Fire Dragons. They introduce the inherited system to newer students, examine what lasted and decide what the system now needs.

System Stewards · Fire Dragons · every year · Term 1 Assessed learning targets

The project has two summative products. Each target below is judged separately against its Band C criterion.

Summative product	Domain	Learning target	Band C — "I can…"
System map & intervention proposal	Regeneration	System Mapping	I can show feedback loops that help or harm and explain why.
	Humanities	Human-Environment Interaction	I can analyse how human choices affect environmental systems and how environments shape human lives.
	Entrepreneurship	Opportunity Spotting	I can group problems, pick one, and explain who it affects.
	Literacy	Developing Arguments and Evidence	I can address counterarguments and use evidence to strengthen my reasoning.
Built improvement & stewardship record	Regeneration	Systems Intervention	I can compare two actions and choose the more effective one, with a reason.
	Regeneration	Action Planning & Execution	I can lead one part, adapt to a challenge, and explain what I changed and why.

Wednesday excursions and on-site investigations help students follow the system beyond a diagram. Partners and school staff provide technical knowledge and challenge assumptions. The project ends with a system map and intervention proposal, a completed improvement, evidence of effects and a named plan for future stewardship.

The other projects

Open a project to see its purpose, what students do, what they learn and the exact learning targets assessed through its summative products.

Fire Dragons · Year A · Term 2Hearts & Hands

Driving question: Can we make something of real value that helps a cause we care about?

Hearts & Hands is social entrepreneurship at its most direct. Students find a real need in their community and a cause worth serving, make a product or service from low-cost materials, and run a campaign to gather support for it. The lesson at its centre is that value is something you create for other people, under real limits of money, materials, and time — and that a good idea is worth only as much as your ability to bring others to it.

What it is

Students create a product or service that helps a cause they care about and track whether it creates value.

Purpose

Connect compassion with disciplined design, money and accountability.

Students do

Investigate a need, design and make an offer, manage a budget, run a campaign and review the result.

Students learn

User understanding, product or service design, cost, revenue, return and persuasive communication.

Assessed learning targets

Each learning target is judged separately against the criterion for the project's developmental band.

Summative product	Domain	Learning target	Band C — "I can…"
Product or service & financial record	Entrepreneurship	Opportunity Spotting	I can group problems, pick one, and explain who it affects.
	Entrepreneurship	User & Context Understanding	I can interview or observe with consent and summarise key needs.
	Entrepreneurship	Financial Planning & Management	I can track costs and income, tell the difference between cash flow and profit, and use unit and total cost to choose or set fair prices.
	Humanities	Production & Exchange	I can analyse how supply, demand, and systems (e.g., markets, government) affect production and exchange.
Fundraising pitch & campaign	Literacy	Persuasive Techniques	I can balance different appeals and choose techniques that fit audience and context.
	Regeneration	Action Planning & Execution	I can lead one part, adapt to a challenge, and explain what I changed and why.

Fire Dragons · Year A · Term 3PEACE by Design

Driving question: How does conflict arise, and how can story help us repair it?

PEACE by Design approaches conflict and repair through story, and takes its name from the school's values — Passion, Equity, Authenticity, Care, and Excellence — which the work asks students to practise rather than recite. Students learn how conflict begins and how it can be resolved, drawing on restorative practices — approaches that focus on repairing harm and relationships rather than assigning blame. They turn that learning into something the class can use, and into stories that help younger readers understand conflict and the work of mending it.

What it is

Students study conflict and repair, then create stories and practical resources for younger learners.

Purpose

Use narrative to understand perspective, harm, representation and restoration.

Students do

Examine cases, practise restorative dialogue, write and illustrate an anthology, and create a class playbook.

Students learn

Perspective, conflict, restorative practice, representation, narrative craft and the PEACE values.

Assessed learning targets

Each learning target is judged separately against the criterion for the project's developmental band.

Summative product	Domain	Learning target	Band C — "I can…"
Illustrated story anthology	Literacy	Narrative Elements	I can analyse how motives and setting details develop conflict, mood, or themes.
	Literacy	Narrative Structure	I can control pacing in longer narratives while keeping the storyline easy to follow.
	Literacy	Narrative Craft and Voice	I can use language deliberately to build atmosphere and distinct voices without distracting the reader.
	Humanities	Understand Perspectives	I can use evidence to explain how context (time, place, identity, power) shapes perspectives in history.
	Humanities	Analyse Cause & Consequence	I can explain how causes and consequences interact over time, using evidence from sources.
Restorative-practice playbook	Literacy	Writing Instructions	I can adapt instructions for different audiences and anticipate common mistakes.
	Humanities	Rights & Responsibilities	I can analyse tensions between rights and responsibilities and explain how different groups experience them.
	Regeneration	Care for People & Place	I can explain how my choices affect people and nature, and how a place gives back to those who care for it.

Fire Dragons · Year B · Term 2Leave It Better

Driving question: Can we plan and fund an expedition that leaves a wild place better than we found it?

Leave It Better is an expedition the students plan, cost, and fund themselves — a rite of passage with a real budget and a real duty to the place they visit. The enterprise lives in the planning. Students cost the trip, weigh its risks, manage or raise the funds, and organise the logistics, then carry out a low-impact expedition that does the place some genuine good. The bar is not to leave no trace but to leave the place better than they found it.

What it is

Students help plan and fund an expedition whose contribution is agreed with the people responsible for the place.

Purpose

Give students responsibility for logistics, finance, safety thinking and contribution.

Students do

Compare destinations, cost options, assess risk, raise funds, undertake the expedition and document its effects.

Students learn

Budgeting, risk, planning, environmental responsibility, evidence and public pitching.

Assessed learning targets

Each learning target is judged separately against the criterion for the project's developmental band.

Summative product	Domain	Learning target	Band C — "I can…"
Expedition plan & pitch	Entrepreneurship	Financial Planning & Management	I can track costs and income, tell the difference between cash flow and profit, and use unit and total cost to choose or set fair prices.
	Humanities	Map & Analyse Place	I can analyse a place using different types of geographic information and explain relationships between features.
	Literacy	Writing Instructions	I can adapt instructions for different audiences and anticipate common mistakes.
Executed expedition & impact record	Entrepreneurship	Team Collaboration	I can plan roles, timelines, and check-ins, help the team stay organised, and give and receive specific, kind feedback.
	Regeneration	Local Restoration	I can repeat a care action over time, observe changes, and decide what to adjust.
	Regeneration	Action Planning & Execution	I can lead one part, adapt to a challenge, and explain what I changed and why.

Fire Dragons · Year B · Term 3Fair Share

Driving question: Whose story gets seen, and how can art make fairness visible?

Fair Share explores fairness, identity, and belonging through art. Students examine where fairness breaks down — whose stories are told and whose are left out — and make art that brings a fairness issue into view for an audience. The project treats art as a way of arguing: a piece that makes a viewer see what they had not seen before.

What it is

Students investigate fairness, identity or belonging and create public art that changes what an audience notices.

Purpose

Develop judgement about representation, power and voice through artistic work.

Students do

Research an issue, consult those affected, develop and revise artwork, exhibit it and write a curatorial statement.

Students learn

Equity, perspective, evidence, visual communication, artistic craft and ethical representation.

Assessed learning targets

Each learning target is judged separately against the criterion for the project's developmental band.

Summative product	Domain	Learning target	Band C — "I can…"
Exhibition art piece	Humanities	Identity, Power & Representation	I can explain how power influences how groups are represented in sources and media and how that representation can affect people's opportunities and belonging.
	Regeneration	Action for Justice & Inclusion	I can notice harm that needs repair and support group action to make things fairer.
Curatorial / artist statement	Humanities	Understand Perspectives	I can use evidence to explain how context (time, place, identity, power) shapes perspectives in history.
	Literacy	Persuasive Techniques	I can balance different appeals and choose techniques that fit audience and context.

Metal Dragons · Term 1Foodprint

Driving question: What does our food cost the living world, and how could we grow it to give back more than it takes?

Foodprint traces the food that reaches Budapest back to the land and the systems it comes from. Students follow the costs that usually stay hidden — to soil, water, climate, and the people who grow and move it — and then act locally by establishing a real food-growing system on regenerative principles. The understanding at the centre is that food is a system with limits, and that some of those limits, once crossed, do not come back.

What it is

Students trace the hidden systems behind food reaching Budapest, then establish a growing system informed by regenerative principles.

Purpose

Connect field research and systems thinking with direct care for soil, water and food.

Students do

Investigate supply chains, map effects, visit food and growing sites, build a system and prepare its maintenance.

Students learn

Food systems, soil, water, climate, labour, transport, systems mapping and stewardship.

Assessed learning targets

Each learning target is judged separately against the criterion for the project's developmental band.

Summative product	Domain	Learning target	Band D — "I can…"
Field-research report & systems map	Regeneration	System Mapping	I can show key feedback loops, who is helped or harmed, how this system connects to a bigger system, and where a small change could shift outcomes.
	Regeneration	Thresholds & Irreversibility	I can identify thresholds in a system and explain why some harms can't be traded against benefits.
	Regeneration	Understanding Regeneration	I can explain different views of what regeneration means and defend my own with reasons.
	Humanities	Analyse Cause & Consequence	I can analyse complex causes and long-term consequences, weighing evidence and different interpretations.
	Humanities	Human-Environment Interaction	I can evaluate human-environment systems using evidence, including trade-offs, equity, and long-term impacts.
	Literacy	Evaluating Sources	I can evaluate sources systematically to support well-reasoned conclusions.
	Literacy	Developing Arguments and Evidence	I can construct nuanced arguments that weigh evidence and address counterarguments convincingly.
	Literacy	Editing and Revision	I can produce polished writing through sustained revision, making strategic improvements for impact.
	Literacy	Acknowledging Sources	I can use a recognised citation style consistently in extended work to maintain integrity.
Established food-growing system	Regeneration	Systems Intervention	I can choose a leverage point, explain likely ripple effects and trade-offs, and decide how we will know if it helped.
	Regeneration	Local Restoration	I can run a simple plan with a way to measure change over time and a named steward, and share a short how-to so others can continue it.
	Entrepreneurship	Opportunity Spotting	I can map causes and connections in the system, then choose a worthy problem with clear criteria.

Metal Dragons · Term 2Worth Making

Driving question: Can we build a venture that meets a real need and creates net-positive impact?

Worth Making asks students to design and run a small real venture — not a simulated classroom economy, but something that creates value for real users. The discipline of the project is judgement: deciding what deserves to be made at all, for whom, and at what cost. The doughnut is the test they keep returning to — does the venture meet a genuine need without overshooting what people and the living world can bear?

What it is

Students test whether a proposed venture meets a genuine need and creates value without avoidable harm.

Purpose

Move entrepreneurship from persuasive pitching to evidence, finance and consequences.

Students do

Interview intended users, prototype, cost the idea, operate a product, service or event, and review its effects.

Students learn

Need validation, user research, venture design, finance, impact and decision-making.

Assessed learning targets

Each learning target is judged separately against the criterion for the project's developmental band.

Summative product	Domain	Learning target	Band D — "I can…"
Venture proposal	Entrepreneurship	Value Proposition	I can show evidence that value matters for users, society, and nature.
	Entrepreneurship	Business Model	I can use a simple business model in a project, see what works, and adjust how we create, deliver, or earn so it stays fair, workable, and sustainable.
	Entrepreneurship	Financial Planning & Management	I can make simple forecasts, run a basic break-even check, and adjust our plan and prices as needed.
	Humanities	Needs vs. Wants	I can evaluate economic decisions by considering incentives, trade-offs, and social and environmental impacts.
	Literacy	Persuasive Techniques	I can use a refined blend of persuasive strategies while sustaining credibility and fairness.
	Literacy	Purpose and Audience	I can produce polished writing that meets conventions for purpose, audience, and context.
Real product, service, or event	Entrepreneurship	Prototyping & Testing	I can test the riskiest assumption first, use evidence to learn, and make improvements.
	Entrepreneurship	Impact-Driven Decision Making	I can recommend and argue for options that balance profitability with fair outcomes for people and nature.
	Regeneration	Circular Design	I can design and test a small material loop, share results, and agree a simple routine so it keeps going.

Metal Dragons · Term 3Circular City

Driving question: How do shared systems flow through our part of Budapest, and where could we change them for the better?

Circular City studies how resources and waste move through students' part of the city — what is used, discarded, repaired, and reused — through the lens of the circular economy. Students then find a point where they can intervene in a shared system and make a change that holds. The work is as much about people as about materials: shifting a shared system means changing a habit, a rule, or the way something is run, not only fixing an object. The aim is to change how a shared system works rather than to start a business, which belonged to the previous project.

What it is

Students investigate how materials move through a local part of Budapest and attempt a bounded civic intervention.

Purpose

Help students see that waste is produced by rules, habits, infrastructure and relationships.

Students do

Map a material flow, interview stakeholders, analyse civic levers, make a proposal and test an intervention.

Students learn

Circular systems, governance, civic change, trade-offs, power, evidence and public communication.

Assessed learning targets

Each learning target is judged separately against the criterion for the project's developmental band.

Summative product	Domain	Learning target	Band D — "I can…"
Systems analysis & civic pitch	Humanities	Understand Rules & Laws	I can evaluate laws and civic systems, considering rights, power, and how change happens through civic action.
	Humanities	Culture & Cultural Change	I can analyse how power, media, and technology influence cultural change and whose identities and values are centred or marginalised, using evidence.
	Regeneration	Decision Influence	I can build support, show benefits and limits, and agree a next step and when we will review it.
	Literacy	Synthesising Information	I can synthesise diverse sources into a coherent analysis that supports a justified conclusion.
	Literacy	Persuasive Techniques	I can use a refined blend of persuasive strategies while sustaining credibility and fairness.
	Literacy	Delivery and Engagement	I can deliver confidently in challenging situations, adapting smoothly to feedback and complexity.
	Literacy	Organising Ideas	I can adapt structure and emphasis in response to audience needs and questions.
Stewarded civic intervention	Regeneration	Action Planning & Execution	I can coordinate a team, show results, and agree how it will continue.
	Regeneration	Care for People & Place	I can lead a small activity that helps repair our reciprocal relationship with people and place, and explain why we chose it and what changed.
	Entrepreneurship	Shared Leadership	I can help our group make fair decisions with consent, include quieter voices, and justify the choices we make.

Light Dragons · whole year · the culmination of D2R

The Regenerative Action Project

Driving question: How do I bring a regenerative venture to life that addresses a problem I care about and lasts after I've gone?

Premise I matter.

The RAP is where a young person shows that they can contribute something meaningful, care about something beyond themselves and bring it to life. It is the culminating experience of the D2R programme.

Full school yearThree terms of sustained work

Small teamsUsually two or three students

BudapestA problem students can investigate directly

Public conclusionA filmed talk and formal handover

Students identify a problem in Budapest, research it deeply, design and implement an intervention, assess what happened and hand the work on. The year asks them to deal with the messy reality of trying to make things better: incomplete information, competing interests, practical limits, setbacks and consequences.

Term 1

Find the problem. Make the plan.

Students walk neighbourhoods, speak with stakeholders, map the surrounding system, research the problem and draft a proposal for formal review.

Week 12 · gateway

REALity Check.

An external panel tests whether the proposal would improve the system, can be carried out with the available time and resources, aligns with values, criteria and the learners' interests, and has a credible path to lasting impact. It may pass, pass with conditions, or return for revision.

Term 2

Make it happen.

Teams implement, document, test and adapt. A mentor brings relevant domain expertise; students remain responsible for project management. Evidence and stakeholder feedback shape the next iteration.

Term 3

Finish. Share. Hand off.

Students assess impact, complete the work, prepare a public TED-style talk and formally transfer responsibility. The presentation is filmed where consent, safeguarding and the work itself allow.

What the project may leave behind

A working systemA process or network that continues to operate.

A product or toolAn app, guide, toolkit or open resource that solves a clear job.

An ongoing programmeA recurring practice, service or community activity.

A ventureA student-founded service, initiative or social enterprise.

A change in policy or practiceAn institution begins to work differently.

A Failure AnalysisA genuine effort that falls short is examined and assessed to the same standard.

A one-off event is insufficient; something must endure. Every RAP names successors, documents how the work should continue and ends with a formal handover. Without stewardship, the project does not count as regenerative.

The point is authentic engagement with the messy reality of trying to make things better — and the lasting belief that one can.

Regenerative Action Project · Light Dragons · whole year Assessed learning targets

The target set below spans the year and is attached to the products through which students research, propose, implement, evaluate, communicate and steward the work.

Summative product	Domain	Learning target	Band D — "I can…"
Research report & systems map	Regeneration	System Mapping	I can show key feedback loops, who is helped or harmed, how this system connects to a bigger system, and where a small change could shift outcomes.
	Humanities	Human-Environment Interaction	I can evaluate human-environment systems using evidence, including trade-offs, equity, and long-term impacts.
	Humanities	Analyse Cause & Consequence	I can analyse complex causes and long-term consequences, weighing evidence and different interpretations.
	Literacy	Evaluating Sources	I can evaluate sources systematically to support well-reasoned conclusions.
	Literacy	Synthesising Information	I can synthesise diverse sources into a coherent analysis that supports a justified conclusion.
	Literacy	Text Organisation and Coherence	I can revise structure to strengthen coherence and improve clarity and impact.
	Literacy	Acknowledging Sources	I can use a recognised citation style consistently in extended work to maintain integrity.
	Literacy	Editing and Revision	I can produce polished writing through sustained revision, making strategic improvements for impact.
Action proposal & REALity Check pitch	Regeneration	Systems Intervention	I can choose a leverage point, explain likely ripple effects and trade-offs, and decide how we will know if it helped.
	Regeneration	Understanding Regeneration	I can explain different views of what regeneration means and defend my own with reasons.
	Entrepreneurship	Opportunity Spotting	I can map causes and connections in the system, then choose a worthy problem with clear criteria.
	Entrepreneurship	Idea Generation	I can combine diverse, creative ideas for inclusive solutions and explain my choice.
	Entrepreneurship	Financial Planning & Management	I can make simple forecasts, run a basic break-even check, and adjust our plan and prices as needed.
	Literacy	Developing Arguments and Evidence	I can construct nuanced arguments that weigh evidence and address counterarguments convincingly.
Progress report & reflection	Regeneration	Action Planning & Execution	I can coordinate a team, show results, and agree how it will continue.
	Entrepreneurship	Impact-Driven Decision Making	I can recommend and argue for options that balance profitability with fair outcomes for people and nature.
	Entrepreneurship	Team Collaboration	I can coordinate skills, resolve conflicts, and track progress on the project.
	Literacy	Reflection and Insight	I can evaluate patterns in my learning and apply insights to new situations.
	Literacy	Giving and Receiving Feedback	I can engage in critical dialogue with peers, giving and receiving evidence-based feedback with tact, and act on it to strengthen the work.
Impact assessment (or failure analysis)	Regeneration	Decision Influence	I can build support, show benefits and limits, and agree a next step and when we will review it.
	Humanities	Governance, Ethics & Futures	I can evaluate different policy or community choices about an emerging technology, considering evidence, ethics, and environmental impacts, and justify my recommendation.
	Humanities	Understand Perspectives	I can evaluate perspectives and bias in sources and explain how historical narratives are constructed and contested.
	Entrepreneurship	User & Context Understanding	I can compare users' views, find patterns, and explain how context shapes needs.
	Literacy	Purpose and Audience	I can produce polished writing that meets conventions for purpose, audience, and context.
Stewardship package	Regeneration	Care for People & Place	I can lead a small activity that helps repair our reciprocal relationship with people and place, and explain why we chose it and what changed.
	Entrepreneurship	Shared Leadership	I can help our group make fair decisions with consent, include quieter voices, and justify the choices we make.
	Literacy	Writing Instructions	I can produce comprehensive instructions for complex tasks with clear navigation.
Final TED-style talk	Literacy	Delivery and Engagement	I can deliver confidently in challenging situations, adapting smoothly to feedback and complexity.
	Literacy	Persuasive Techniques	I can use a refined blend of persuasive strategies while sustaining credibility and fairness.
	Literacy	Creating Visual Aids	I can justify how my visuals clarify key information and could mislead an audience.
	Literacy	Tone and Register	I can refine tone and register to match conventions and complex topics precisely.
	Literacy	Organising Ideas	I can adapt structure and emphasis in response to audience needs and questions.

Impact pathway, people and partners, literacy integration and the worked System Stewards teacher plan appear in Appendix B.

Assessment

We judge specific learning from specific evidence, then build broader claims carefully across time and contexts.

D2R assessment begins with the learning target. A polished exhibition, a socially appealing cause or a confident speaker can create a powerful halo. The teacher’s first question remains: what does this evidence show about the target?

A judgement is only as trustworthy as the chain connecting the target, evidence, interpretation, moderation and next teaching move.

How a learning target becomes a judgement

A learning target states the criterion for one capability at one developmental band. Teachers select a limited set of targets for a substantial product, teach the knowledge and skill those targets require, and collect evidence from the student's work. Each target is then judged separately. The quality judgement and the conditions under which the work was produced are recorded in different places.

The reporting sequence is Not yet evidenced → Emerging → Developing → Competent → Extending. Competent is the target itself: the evidence meets the band-level expectation in this context.

Not yet evidenced

No suitable evidence exists, or the evidence does not address the target.

Emerging

Some relevant features are present; important parts of the criterion are absent, inaccurate or unclear.

Developing

The work approaches the criterion; the remaining gap is limited and identifiable.

Competent

The evidence meets the band-level target in this context.

Extending

The work exceeds the target through greater depth, integration, judgement or transfer that remains within the construct.

“Not yet evidenced” is a status. The other levels describe quality visible in the evidence. Assistance is recorded separately.

Worked example · Fire Dragons · System Stewards How four learning targets are judged in one proposal

This is the single complete worked rubric in the handbook. The proposal carries four learning targets, each judged on its own row. The levels are criterion-referenced and are never averaged into one project grade.

Learning target (one per row)	Domain	No Evidence	Emerging	Developing	Competent (the target)	Extending
System Mapping — show feedback loops that help or harm, and explain why	Regeneration	Nothing yet shows a system has been mapped.	Names parts of the system but not how they connect.	Shows some connections, but feedback loops are missing or unexplained.	Shows feedback loops that help or harm and explains why.	Traces a loop into a wider system, or helps another student see it.
Human-Environment Interaction — analyse how human choices affect environmental systems and how environments shape human lives	Humanities	Nothing yet links human choices to the environment.	Names a human choice and an environmental effect, but separately.	Links a choice to an effect, but in one direction only.	Analyses how human choices affect environmental systems and how environments shape human lives.	Weighs a trade-off, or whose lives are affected unequally.
Opportunity Spotting — group problems, pick one, and explain who it affects	Entrepreneurship	No problems identified yet.	Lists problems without grouping or choosing.	Picks a problem but does not say clearly who it affects.	Groups problems, picks one, and explains who it affects.	Justifies the choice against clear criteria, or names who is most affected.
Developing Arguments and Evidence — address counterarguments and use evidence to strengthen reasoning	Literacy	No argument or evidence yet.	States a claim with little or no evidence.	Uses some evidence but does not address other views.	Addresses counterarguments and uses evidence to strengthen the reasoning.	Weighs competing evidence, or anticipates the strongest objection.

Rubric Logic Guide v2.2 word bounds: No Evidence ≤10 words; Emerging ≤15; Developing ≤20; Competent ≤25 and mirrors the target; Extending ≤20. Use the current staff guide for full descriptor-writing rules.

Knowledge and skill

Each substantial product carries a limited set of targets. The rubric describes quality visible in the evidence. The Competent descriptor expresses the target. Developing and Emerging identify the most important missing features. Extending remains inside the construct and shows stronger control, reach or reasoning.

Targets are judged separately. We do not average a systems map, argument, collaboration record and presentation into one project grade. A student can show strong writing and weak systems thinking in the same product; the record should preserve both facts.

Quality and independence

The quality of the work and the support under which it was produced are recorded separately. Prompting, modelling, peer contribution and teacher intervention matter when we interpret independence, yet they should not quietly become the quality scale. This separation allows a teacher to say: the product meets the criterion, and the student still needs substantial support to produce work of this quality.

Dispositions and values

Dispositions and values require patterns across situations. Educators record the context, what the student noticed, what they did, which ability was visible, whether inclination and sensitivity were present, what PEACE value guided the judgement, and what happened afterwards. One observation may prompt a conversation or next step; it should rarely support a broad claim by itself.

What one performance can show

A project can provide strong evidence of a target in that context. It cannot establish distant transfer, a permanent character trait or a whole competency. Broad claims require recurrence, different contexts, more than one observer where appropriate, and moderation among teachers.

Moderation and professional judgement

Teachers unpack targets together, examine examples, compare independent judgements and discuss disagreement. Moderation does not remove professional judgement; it makes the reasoning visible and improves consistency. AI may help organise evidence or draft feedback, but educators verify the evidence, make the judgement and remain accountable for what is recorded.

The full reporting table, evidence rules, contextual observation format and moderation protocol are in Appendix E. The worked rubric appears here so the model can be understood before the technical appendix.

What the work requires

D2R depends on curriculum knowledge, project design, time, partnership, moderation and a school willing to learn from failure.

The work of the teacher

A D2R teacher is an instructor, curriculum designer, project manager, critic, assessor, relationship-builder and guardian of students and community partners. The role cannot be reduced to facilitating student choice. Teachers need protected planning time, access to shared project materials, subject and pedagogical knowledge, partner support, moderation and opportunities to learn from one another.

Projects also need operational infrastructure: budgets, transport, risk assessment, safeguarding, consent, materials, workshop access, data protection, documentation and clear ownership of partner relationships. Wednesday experiential learning only works when these systems are planned centrally enough that teachers are not rebuilding them every week.

Community work must be reciprocal

People and places are not educational resources for the school to consume. Partners should know what students can realistically contribute, what the school expects from them, how consent and representation will be handled, and how the work will end. Students learn to ask before acting, avoid speaking for people they have not understood, acknowledge burden and close relationships responsibly.

Equity has to be designed

Public project work can reward fluent speakers, confident networkers and students whose families can supply time, contacts or specialist help. Teachers provide different routes to contribution, accessible materials and environments, explicit teaching of hidden project practices, predictable routines, structured turn-taking, carefully chosen roles and individual evidence. Support can intensify without lowering the intellectual purpose.

What can travel

Core commitments

Design backwards from regenerative entrepreneurship.
Build knowledge deliberately.
Use a developmentally appropriate process.
Work with a purpose beyond the grade.
Protect revision and stewardship.
Separate task judgements from longitudinal observation.
Make individual learning visible in collaborative work.

Local choices

Project topics and partners.
Learning-group names.
Timetable pattern.
Products and exhibitions.
Technology platform.
Balance between centrally authored and teacher-designed projects.

Current status

Built

A defined mission, two developmental processes, project rotations, banded learning targets, a criterion-referenced assessment system and several years of local implementation.

Observed locally

Students can produce substantial work, respond to critique, build relationships with partners and carry responsibility when the conditions are well designed.

Still to test

Long-term agency, transfer across distant contexts, consistency of assessment, effects on different groups, community impact, teacher workload and replication beyond REAL School.

This is the one place where the handbook states the status plainly. The architecture is substantial. Some of its most important claims remain hypotheses. The next stage is to gather better evidence, examine failure and change the design when the evidence requires it.

A closing word

D2R asks young people to understand the world, imagine what could be better, build with others and care for what follows.

The world does not need another generation trained only to describe problems, nor one encouraged to act without understanding them. It needs people who can learn deeply, judge carefully, work with others and undertake worthwhile action.

That is the purpose of Dream-to-Reality. Students dream, build and steward work in the places where they live. Teachers make sure the work carries knowledge, craft, challenge and care. The school accepts responsibility for testing whether the design delivers what it promises.

What does the world need? People capable of helping to make it healthier, fairer and more alive — and an education designed backwards from that need.

AppendixA

Process guide: SEEDS and the Builder Process

Group assignment, the common term cadence and teacher planning checks.

D2R uses two related processes. They make the arc of inquiry, making, revision and continuation visible. The process is a planning and learning structure; it does not replace instruction, subject knowledge, discussion, modelling or teacher judgement.

The complete stage definitions now sit beside the process visuals in Section 03. This appendix keeps the planning material that teachers use across projects.

Water + Air

SEEDS

Cyclical, place-based and responsive to the children’s attention.

Earth + Fire + Metal

Builder Process

Linear within a project, explicitly staged and increasingly demanding.

Light capstone

SEEDS returns

A mature year-long cycle carried with greater independence and civic responsibility.

The common twelve-week term cadence

Stage	Typical timing	Teacher emphasis
Immerse	Weeks 1–3	Encounter the people, place and system; build foundational knowledge; examine examples; establish criteria.
Dream	Week 4	Generate a wide field of possible responses before selecting.
Plan	Week 5	Roles, timeline, resources, constraints, risk, partner agreement and intended evidence.
Do	Weeks 6–9	Build, test and teach knowledge or technique when the work exposes a need.
Re-Do	Weeks 9–11	Critique against criteria, expert response, multiple drafts and technical improvement.
Share	Week 11	Place the work before the people who can use, judge or challenge it.
Steward	Week 12	Review effects, document learning, hand over responsibly or close the work well.

Teacher use

Plan the knowledge and key examples before planning activities.
Name the partner, user or audience and agree what participation will require from them.
Choose a small number of summative products and targets.
Build critique and revision into the timetable before the final share.
Decide how individual learning will be evidenced inside team work.
Define continuation, maintenance or closure before the work begins.

AppendixB

Project planning and teacher material

Impact pathways, partners, literacy integration and one complete teacher-planning example.

The project library preserves the teacher material that extends Section 07. Assessed learning targets now sit with each project in the main handbook. This appendix keeps impact pathways, people and partners, literacy integration, the shared planning boundary and a full System Stewards example.

Source boundary. The long handbook contains the complete project map, assessed-target tables, shared cadence and a full System Stewards example. It does not contain nine distinct lesson-by-lesson plans or nine completed rubrics. This handbook does not invent them.

Project descriptions and assessed-target tables now sit together in Section 07. This appendix adds the teacher-facing material that is not repeated there.

Impact pathways, partners and literacy integration

Fire Dragons · every year · Term 1System Stewards

See the System Stewards overview and assessed targets in Section 07. The material below begins with the impact pathway, partners and literacy integration.