Vision

Our school vision is for every child to be known, happy and learning.

• For a child to feel known, a teacher must be caring
• For a child to be happy, a teacher must be positive
• For a child to be learning, a teacher must be skilled

Skilled teachers

'Pedagogy' is the name for the set of skills that our teachers have developed to help children learn best. 

For example:

• Providing access arrangements - for children needing additional support
• Providing additional challenge for the most able
• Defining the line - being clear about what the children need to have learned by the end of the lesson
• Launchpad - having clear moments of assessment and launch during the lesson

What is learning?

Learning can be thought of as simply a change to long term memory.

In reality, it's more complicated than that. We all know that being told directions once will not be enough for us to remember. In these circumstances, we are likely to repeat the directions over and over again. While we are doing this, we seem to be remembering - but that doesn't mean that we will remember it when we are 5 minutes down the road - or 5 weeks later.

To help us move our learning to our long term memory, it helps if...

• it's explained to us really clearly in the first place
• we experience it (it's much easier to remember the route once we've been there)
• we think hard about it (including discussing it)
• we can make links to what we already know (for example, remembering to turn left - after the supermarket we've been to many times before is easier to remember)
• we can keep coming back to it - to review and 'test' our selves (the more times we drive a route, it can almost become automatic)

In the classroom, this means that we make sure we give opportunities to think hard about what is being taught, we present it as clearly as possible, we look for ways for the learning to be experienced, we make deliberate links to previous lessons and we keep coming back to what has been taught previously.

What does learning look like in each subject?

Lessons in each subject will always help children to remember key knowledge and to master key skills, or to give opportunities to apply or assess previous learning.

Teachers at Huntingtree use our lesson structures - which ensure that opportunities for modelling, reviewing prior-learning and assessment are used well, and children are have work set at just the right level of challenge, with the right level of support and 'scaffolding'.

Each subject has a ‘flavour'... pedagogy for each subject is shaped by the activities that are specific to it, for example:

• map-reading in geography
• observing and measuring in science
• empathising and reflecting in religious education
• competing, moving and performing in physical education.

You can read about the specific pedagogies and teaching strategies used in each subject by clicking here.

Early reading

Children in EYFS and key stage 1 learn phonics, each day. We use the Read Write Inc. approach, sometimes known as Ruth Miskin's phonics. This is a synthetic phonics programme which helps all children learn to read fluently and at speed so they can focus on developing their skills in comprehension, vocabulary and spelling. Children bring home resources and books from this scheme, in EYFS and key stage 1, which link directly to what is being taught in class. As they progress, the children then access the library, where they can choose from fiction, which is colour-banded at their reading level, and another choice of non-fiction that sparks their interest.