Our Learning

Relationships are at the heart of everything we do for our children, and we know them well. Based on these strong relationships, the progress they make and the community we serve, we tailor our relevant and wide-ranging curriculum to encompass far more than just the national requirement. 

Our curriculum resources support a knowledge-rich curriculum structure that is coherent and cumulative:

• Core knowledge is defined and articulated across subjects through a focused teaching sequence that is coherent, interleaved and built around spaced retrieval practice.
• The BIG ideas maps help teachers and pupils see the complete learning sequence. These are also useful for parents to support home learning and engage with meaningful questions. 
• Knowledge organisers convey the essential knowledge in one place to reduce the split-attention effect.
• Tier 3 vocabulary and word generation are developed within the core concepts that the knowledge organiser projects.
• Knowledge notes support each lesson, conveying concepts and vocabulary. They are used to elaborating on the core concepts and content.
• Knowledge notes redefine the purpose of a pupil's books. Children use their books to retrieve and reuse prior knowledge. Knowledge notes also scaffold and support the selection, organisation and integration of new understanding. These strategies strengthen cognitive connections, deepen learning and increase procedural and conceptual fluency.
• Resources are dual coded and designed to support easy retrieval. The use of contrasting black, simple icons is deliberate. Words and icons are designed to support decoding, use, connection and analysis of core vocabulary and concepts. 
• Vocabulary is mapped across Y1 – Y6 for Science, geography and history. It includes Tier 2 and Tier 3 words as well as etymology, morphology, colloquialism and idioms for each learning module. 
• Each study sequence is planned lesson by lesson using a question to focus the learning. Foundational knowledge is identified as an essential component within the sequence of learning. 
• We use cumulative questions. These are designed to test the understanding of the taught content, lesson by lesson. They are repeatable and reusable. They are also used to ease the forgetting curve and enable quick retrieval after dialogue and conversation that prime the memory. Lesson by lesson questions enable teachers to know where strengths and misconceptions appear before the end of the study. At the end of a study, pupils will respond and answer the full quiz to show what they know. 

Our teaching and learning policy can be viewed by selecting from below.