Lark Hill Primary School

Teaching & Learning Policy

At the heart of the Lark Hill curriculum are our school values:

We are a community of responsibility and respect; creativity and challenge: A Happy Place to Learn.

Attending Lark Hill and learning here should foster those values so that the children who leave us to go to high school are responsible and respectful, creative in their thinking and open to new challenges, happy in their learning. By embedding these values, habits and behaviours we aim to give every child the very best chance to succeed.

To ensure that new learning is remembered and committed to long-term memory we strive to present new learning in carefully planned ways that become safe and predictable for our learners, taking account of Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction.   In brief, this means that we: Review small chunks of new learning to build automatic recall. We introduce new learning in small, manageable steps so no one is over-whelmed. We question our learners to establish just what has been remembered and that we really understand their thinking. We provide models and worked examples. We guide their practice by showing them and working with them before expecting independent application. We deliberately and specifically check the understanding of all learners. We aim for everyone to succeed; not moving on when a select few children have 'got it'. We provide resources and assistance that make tasks easier for some pupils to access the learning while they are developing their confidence and competence rather than giving struggling pupils easier work. We provide opportunities for repetitive 'over-learning' to make it stick. Parents are a vital component here, reinforcing and revisiting the work done in school at home. We review. We come back to prior learning. We make links. We make sure vital skills and knowledge are internalised.   This all ensures that more pupils are successful more of the time and we know that nothing motivates quite like success. Our learners feel successful, therefore they feel more confident in taking on new challenges.

In practice

All of this requires an established, predictable, consistent structure to learning and to the school day. Pupils at Lark Hill know just what to expect. In Reception the day starts with shared time with parents, tackling a skill that will require much practice (usually writing your own name to begin with). KS1 pupils know that their day will involve registration, straight into an English lesson; in KS2 - straight into Fluency Bee maths practice, then the daily mathematics lesson.

Reception children (and all older children who still require it, follow visual timetables that set out the course of the rest of the day in small chunks. In reception, the learning is a mixture of adult-directed learning and child-directed learning through play which takes place both inside and outside. We model curiosity, correct speech in full sentences, good manners, kindness, cheerfulness and resilience. We notice the emergence of all these traits in the children and praise them specifically to encourage more. We correct and re-direct, focusing on encouraging desired, pro-social, effective learning behaviours, rather than dwelling unhelpfully on unwanted behaviours. Reception children quickly develop their language skills and their capacity to focus on tasks and take adult direction.

In KS1 and KS2 teaching and learning builds on the foundations of Early Years, becoming more formal at developmentally-appropriate stages. Lessons in all subjects follow an I do-We do-You do model. In other words, teachers model the learning, showing exactly what is to be done and how to do it well (I do). Then children are supported to attempt the tasks in small steps with support and often some of the work already done for them (we do). Finally, children work independently (you do). My turn-Your turn (Teacher models-pupils copy) is a feature of most lessons from phonics to maths to French to PE and beyond. Lessons generally start with teacher input during which time Teaching Assistants ensure that all children, especially those targeted by the teaching team as requiring support due to a learning or social and emotional need, are able to fully focus. Once the children are working more actively in groups, in pairs or independently, the teacher and TA circulate, providing constant, targeted feedback, considering the particular needs of each individual. Adaptations will include the use of strategic pairing, provision of additional or different resources to scaffold learning, chunking of learning and the provision of clearer or simplified models.

Throughout school, teachers ensure that pupils are actively engaged in all lessons at all times. Even during teacher-input time when they are required to listen and attend to the teacher's modelling or sharing of information, pupils will be given an active role to play through My Turn-Your Turn, talk to your talk partner, show me (with gesture, fingers or annotations in books or on white boards) as well as answering questions. Questions are planned and questioning is targeted. The class may be asked a question but teachers do not routinely rely on children putting up hands to answer. Instead pupils will be expected to talk to a partner, to answer as a whole class, to answer through non-verbal means (so all can contribute) or else the teacher will allow thinking time and then decide to ask a particular pupil to check for understanding. All attempts are made to ensure that pupils feel safe and happy to contribute at such times and that their success is all but guaranteed (by means of scaffolding before the answer and/or returning to them if they made an error or misconception once they have had this corrected).

Creativity & Challenge

At Lark Hill we strive to shape creative thinkers. As such 'creativity' does not just describe the sort of activities that take place in art or music but rather the kind of thinking that should be required in all lessons. Questioning and task-design must account for opportunities for pupils to address problems in more than one possible way so that they can use their initiative, try and refine attempts and be creative in their responses, adjusting and refining as they go. This is as true of maths and science as of PE, DT, English or art.

In seeking to build resilient, mentally strong young people, we have to build a positive relationship to challenge. We understand that pupils must feel safe to challenge themselves and present all learning with the following model in mind:

By being positive explicitly about challenge and ensuring that challenges build incrementally, initial failures are deemed part of the learning process rather than negatives and the right support, resources and scaffolding are available, we ensure that pupils spend as much time as possible (but no more) in the challenge zone. Again, success is the greatest motivator and children feel much more ready to challenge themselves when they have had previous experiences of feeling challenged but having things work out well.