Our Highest Expectations Inspire Children to Embrace Learning and Life As an Adventure

Core Professional Purpose

Our highest expectations inspire children to embrace learning and life as an adventure

Principles

We inspire responsible citizenship.

Reflecting and evaluating moves all our learning forward.

We seek solutions out of problems.

We share the responsibility to earn and show respect.

The rewards are on the journey, not just the destination.

We believe in ourselves.

This Teaching and Learning Policy captures some of Boughton Heath Primary School most strongly held beliefs about the way children learn and what those beliefs mean for the way we teach.

Through this policy we aim to:

• Secure high quality teaching and learning throughout the school
• Maintain and improve upon the quality of learning experiences offered to pupils which stem from tangible first hand learning
• Raise standards of attainment for all pupils across the schools
• Establish an agreed range of practice in Boughton Heath in respect of teaching and learning

Entitlement

We plan to meet the needs of all pupils with increasing effectiveness by offering approaches to teaching and learning, and provide appropriate conditions for learning, which are consistent across the school. The approaches adopted will be those that best develop the learning of our pupils and enhance the attainment of all. Continuing professional development opportunities will be made available to all staff in order that they have the necessary skills, competencies and understandings that enable them to meet the above aims. This policy will be a key component in our induction of all new staff.

Rationale

Boughton Heath Primary School has a distinctive ethos: a ‘whole child’ approach and a commitment to developing confident, enquiring children who have high self-esteem and are inspired by the world in which they live.

Charles Darwin provides our model for learning: as a passionate enquirer, Darwin modelled skills of observation, scrutiny, questioning, comparison and contrast, ordering and evaluation. He was utterly absorbed by the world in which he found himself, challenged by its complexity and inspired to push boundaries of understanding. His starting point was the particular, the local and the immediate context; in the same way, our curriculum centres upon local and first-hand experience as a catalyst for our children’s imaginations.

Our vision is to develop a community of growing independent learners who are fundamentally motivated by life, as was Darwin. Irrespective of the background or ‘ability’ of the child, Boughton Heath is committed to developing children’s skills as ‘connection-makers’, to lead them towards becoming adults with the capacity and confidence to interpret their experience and to make sense of it in a complex world.

This distinctive approach is, in many ways, counter cultural: we prize authenticity and personal growth over quick ‘success’ and being overtly ‘impressive’. We find that only mushrooms grow quickly, and that slowing down is an intrinsic element of our ethos. Through the development of fine motor and coordination skills, children can learn to engage at depth in the here and now. At a deeper level, there is a spiritual level to our curriculum, in that from deeper ‘seeing’ of the world around them, comes quality engagement and subsequently the desire to write and respond, and to write and respond well.

Our approach to learning, for ourselves as teachers, as well as our children, needs to be sensitively grown and nurtured over time, through planned sequences of first-hand (or vicarious) experiences and reflection. This is an opportunity to be bold, in a supportive community of teaching and learning. Together, we are committed to leading children towards becoming independent learners who are inspired by their lives and who can express their complex responses to it.

Curriculum Rationale

Our curriculum map has been produced using our research into how children learn. We have carefully considered where to position the experiences, skills and knowledge we believe our children need, in order to be successful on their learning journeys. We have taken the 2014 National Curriculum and linked our key skills to each curriculum area to ensure clear consistent progression.

The topics we have produced are definitely not carved in stone. We will evaluate annually the success of each theme, within the National Curriculum. This will maintain the integrity of our curriculum coverage, continuity of skills development and the rich and varied experiences we expect to provide for all pupils.

Basic Skills

We value the acquisition of basic skills as we see these as the scaffolding for all learning. These skills are vital for enabling all pupils to access the whole curriculum and to enhance future economic and social wellbeing. It is the responsibility of all staff to teach and extend the basic skills in Mathematics and English.

Work will be carefully planned to ensure continuity and progression. We are aware that pupils start at different points and progress at different rates and consequently appropriate targets will be set for differing groups of children and individuals. All pupils can expect quality first teaching in phonics, reading, writing and number.

Children’s progress will be monitored and assessed on a termly basis. Whole school tracking procedures are in place and action will be taken to support those whose progress is slow or those pupils falling behind expected levels.

Boughton Heath Primary School recognises the roles that all parties must play in order to support continuous improvement in basic skills. Dialogue with parents will be open and honest indicating achievement and efforts in basic skills. The school will provide guidance and information for parents to enable them to be partners in pupils’ learning.

Additional Guidance-Homework Policy

Quality First Teaching

Lessons will provide a safe and exploratory environment for children to develop more autonomy over their learning and the questions which they pose. This will be evident in the responses of pupils during the lesson, the level of discussions in which they are engaged, the successful completion of tasks and the standard of the work produced. It will be clear that expectations are high.

There will be a range of questions in lessons from teachers and pupils. The nature and depth of these should engage learners in applying their knowledge and skills and encourage thinking and the development of further skills.

Themes and lessons will be well paced according to the needs of the children. Pupil participation will be encouraged through high levels of interaction, pupil involvement and KAGAN cooperative learning

Metacognition

Developing children’s awareness of how they learn best is as important as what they learn so as to grow confident and flexible learners. For this reason metacognition is a central element of Teaching and Learning at the school. Our pupils have identified the pre-requisites for good learning. These factors are reflected within the acronym LEARN:

L-Look and Listen

E-Engage with the Environment

A-Ask and Think

R-Reflect

N-Never give up

It is explored in whole school assemblies as well as in classrooms to support active learning. Children are encouraged to apply their knowledge of different learning approaches through a variety of methods.

At the start of the academic year pupils will be reminded of what a good learner does to secure success. All adults working with children are encouraged to use metacognitive strategies to support learning readiness and to ensure pupil focus.

Learning Environment

In order that we can achieve our educational aims we believe that learning environments should be carefully designed and thoughtfully organised, to encourage enquiry and a desire to learn.

We expect our school environment (both inside and out) to inspire our community of learners. Each space should be carefully planned to encourage debate, to make people stop and think, to provide a space for quiet reflection but also to showcase work and to raise aspiration.

Feedback

Good marking and feedback are an integral part of the teaching and learning process. We believe that constructive feedback will enable pupils to focus on success and improvement needs against learning intentions/objectives.

In order for feedback to be formative we believe the information must be used and acted on by the children. This process will enable them to become reflective learners and enable them to close the gap between current and desired performance.

Research evidence indicates that effective feedback is one of the highest impact approaches to raising educational standards in schools. We expect all staff to give the high quality oral feedback to pupils and mark work in the agreed way such that pupils are clear about their next learning steps.

Display

Good display can create an atmosphere where children feel welcome and secure, where they feel a sense of belonging to the environment and of the environment belonging to them. Good display creates a rich learning environment that stimulates and sustains interest through sensual experience. Sensitive display of the child’s work will demonstrate the teacher’s respect for the child’s efforts and contribution to the class.

The use of objects as an integral part of a display creates interest and engagement. Objects should be used within the classroom to reflect our approach to the curriculum and learning.

Displays should be moved from classrooms to central areas so that our community can appreciate and value the work being undertaken in the school. These displays will reflect the high standards we expect and raise aspiration across the school.

Cultural entitlement

We are committed to providing a rich and vibrant curriculum for our pupils, to which high quality cultural experiences are fundamental. We expect that each and every one of our pupils will have first hand experiences every term as part of their thematic approach to the curriculum. We are ideally situated to provide a wealth of learning opportunities within our local environment of Cheshire West and Chester.

We have a long tradition of excellence in our music, drama and sporting provision and we are committed to increasing opportunities for the visual arts.

Inclusion

We are a fully inclusive school and will ensure that all children, whatever their background, level of need or ability will be accepted by the school community. We will have high aspirations for all pupils and we will provide equality of opportunity within the school and this is made clear by our equality policy.

Positive Behaviour

We have high standards of behaviour and we expect pupils to behave appropriately and adhere to our agreed golden rules. This is achieved through all staff dealing consistently with behaviour at all times.

We expect to see groups of children working industriously around our school as learning takes place everywhere and is not limited to classrooms. These pupils may not be directly supervised and it is the responsibility of us all to commend them but also to discipline if high standards of behaviour are not being adhered to.

Extra Curricular Learning

We will endeavour to provide a wide range of extra-curricular experiences that pupils can access as an extension to the opportunities provided within our curriculum. These will be run by external providers, quality assured by the school and by our own school staff. Each term we will evaluate what is on offer. We will always attempt to provide for those clubs and activities that our community request whilst bearing in mind the need to provide rich and varied opportunities for all children.

Learning Wheel

The learning wheel forms the structure and sequence of learning at Boughton Heath. We firmly believe that with this structure the quality of learning and the process of learning will be enhanced. Children will follow this structure to enable them to have a deeper level of learning and use thinking skills which link to our work on philosophy for children.

Each classroom area has one full learning wheel on display with children’s work associated with each section around.

ENGLISH Key stage 1 – Year 1

During year 1, teachers should build on work from the Early Years Foundation Stage, making sure that pupils can sound and blend unfamiliar printed words quickly and accurately using the phonic knowledge and skills that they have already learnt. Teachers should also ensure that pupils continue to learn new grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and revise and consolidate those learnt earlier. The understanding that the letter(s) on the page represent the sounds in spoken words should underpin pupils’ reading and spelling of all words. This includes common words containing unusual GPCs. The term ‘common exception words’ is used throughout the programmes of study for such words.

Alongside this knowledge of GPCs, pupils need to develop the skill of blending the sounds into words for reading and establish the habit of applying this skill whenever they encounter new words. This will be supported by practice in reading books consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and skill and their knowledge of common exception words.At the same time they will need to hear, share and discuss a wide range of high-quality books to develop a love of reading and broaden their vocabulary.

Pupils should be helped to read words without overt sounding and blending after a few encounters. Those who are slow to develop this skill should have extra practice.

Pupils’ writing during year 1 will generally develop at a slower pace than their reading. This is because they need to encode the sounds they hear in words (spelling skills), develop the physical skill needed for handwriting, and learn how to organise their ideas in writing.

Pupils entering year 1 who have not yet met the early learning goals for literacy should continue to follow their school’s curriculum or the Early Years Foundation Stage to develop their word reading, spelling and language skills. However, these pupils should follow the year 1 programme of study in terms of the books they listen to and discuss, so that they develop their vocabulary and understanding of grammar, as well as their knowledge more generally across the curriculum. If they are still struggling to decode and spell, they need to be taught to do this urgently through a rigorous and systematic phonics programme so that they catch up rapidly.

Teachers should ensure that their teaching develops pupils’ oral vocabulary as well as their ability to understand and use a variety of grammatical structures, giving particular support to pupils whose oral language skills are insufficiently developed.

Year 1 programme of study

Reading – word reading

Statutory requirements

Pupils should be taught to:

• apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words
• respond speedily with the correct sound to graphemes (letters or groups of letters) for all 40+ phonemes, including, where applicable, alternative sounds for graphemes
• read accurately by blending sounds in unfamiliar words containing GPCs that have been taught
• read common exception words, noting unusual correspondences between spelling and sound and where these occur in the word
• read words containing taught GPCs and –s, –es, –ing, –ed, –er and –est endings
• read other words of more than one syllable that contain taught GPCs
• read words with contractions [for example, I’m, I’ll, we’ll], and understand that the apostrophe represents the omitted letter(s)
• read aloud accurately books that are consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and that do not require them to use other strategies to work out words
• re-read these books to build up their fluency and confidence in word reading.

Notes and guidance (non-statutory)

Pupils should revise and consolidate the GPCs and the common exception words taught in Reception. As soon as they can read words comprising the year 1 GPCs accurately and speedily, they should move on to the year 2 programme of study for word reading.
The number, order and choice of exception words taught will vary according to the phonics programme being used. Ensuring that pupils are aware of the GPCs they contain, however unusual these are, supports spelling later.
Young readers encounter words that they have not seen before much more frequently than experienced readers do, and they may not know the meaning of some of these. Practice at reading such words by sounding and blending can provide opportunities not only for pupils to develop confidence in their decoding skills, but also for teachers to explain the meaning and thus develop pupils’ vocabulary.
Pupils should be taught how to read words with suffixes by being helped to build on the root words that they can read already. Pupils’ reading and re-reading of books that are closely matched to their developing phonic knowledge and knowledge of common exception words supports their fluency, as well as increasing their confidence in their reading skills. Fluent word reading greatly assists comprehension, especially when pupils come to read longer books.

Reading – comprehension

Statutory requirements

Pupils should be taught to:

• develop pleasure in reading, motivation to read, vocabulary and understanding by:

• listening to and discussing a wide range of poems, stories and non-fiction at a level beyond that at which they can read independently
• being encouraged to link what they read or hear read to their own experiences
• becoming very familiar with key stories, fairy stories and traditional tales, retelling them and considering their particular characteristics
• recognising and joining in with predictable phrases
• learning to appreciate rhymes and poems, and to recite some by heart
• discussing word meanings, linking new meanings to those already known

• understand both the books they can already read accurately and fluently and those they listen to by:

• drawing on what they already know or on background information and vocabulary provided by the teacher
• checking that the text makes sense to them as they read and correcting inaccurate reading
• discussing the significance of the title and events
• making inferences on the basis of what is being said and done
• predicting what might happen on the basis of what has been read so far

• participate in discussion about what is read to them, taking turns and listening to what others say
• explain clearly their understanding of what is read to them.