Trust Vision
Our schools are places of excellence-providing service and witness to children, their families, and the wider Catholic community. As a family of schools, we enrich the learning experiences of all our young people to enable them to achieve their full potential.
Our Aims
Teaching and learning at St Bega’s promotes best practice and establishes consistency in teaching and learning across the whole school. It aims to ensure that all children are provided with high quality learning experiences, leading to a consistently high level of pupil achievement and attitude.
We expect consistency in the quality of teaching and learning across our school so that all children make good progress – our children deserve nothing less.
Learning and long-term memory
Teachers employ a wide range of different strategies to ensure that learning ‘sticks’ so that ‘retrieval has a greater impact on memory than re-study’.
Our Lesson Design
Our lesson design is evident in all subjects to ensure consistency of high quality lessons that suit the needs of our children.
Resilience- An atmosphere of resilience and risk-taking should pervade in all lessons.
‘Stuck? Good, now we’ll really learn something!’
- This means that both staff and pupils are not afraid to make mistakes or to admit that they are unsure about something.
- Learning how, to look ‘inwards’ first when faced with challenges or problems to overcome, such as with ‘three before me’.
The Learning Environment –our classrooms reflect our Catholic identity and our high expectations
- The focal point of each room is the sacred space, which is changed according to the Liturgical year.
- An attractive and high-quality reading area illustrates our commitment to promoting the children’s love of reading.
- Our classrooms are tidy, well organised, and clutter-free and set the culture for high quality learning.
- Children’s tables are arranged so that children can work in groups. However, in certain circumstances, it is appropriate for them to be arranged differently - and there is a clear rationale behind this.
- Displays are current, interactive, aspirational and attractive with a reasonable balance between displaying children’s work and providing prompts for learning.
- All classrooms have: a ‘Working Wall’, English prompts (e.g.: letter formation, vocabulary, and grammar prompts), Maths prompts (e.g.: number bonds, times tables, place value). They will also display question prompts and fundamental features of our lesson design.
- All resources should be motivating and accessible. Teachers do not rely heavily on worksheets and published schemes but adapt materials to suit the needs of children.
Monitoring
- The leadership team will monitor the high-quality teaching and learning throughout the school to ensure our children receive the best they deserve.
- This will include book looks, pupil progress meeting, Learning Walks, talking to children and Lesson Observations.
- Instructional feedback and coaching are given to teachers as our commitment to professional development.
- Performance management links to the school development plan and Trust priorities.
Effective learning results in:
• Knowing you have succeeded.
• Feeling you can do more.
• Explaining what you have learned.
• Applying it to other situations.
• Teaching it to someone else.
• Feeling good about yourself.
Presentation:
All pupils practise using a ruler and improve their underlining skills on a regular basis. The following principles apply to all pupils but some younger pupils in Key Stage 1 will not be expected to underline their work.
In all written work, pupils should be reminded to:
- Write the long date on the top line of the page in regular sized writing: e.g. Tuesday 1st September 2024.
- LO and title are not required.
- A line is left between title/LO and start of work.
- Start writing from the left-hand side/next to the margin on every page.
- A learning objective should not be written by the child in KS1 or SEND children in KS2.
- Poor letter formation is addressed by teacher/TA.
- Teachers to model correct handwriting style in books and on board.
- Practise and improve their ruler and underlining skills on a regular basis.
- Draw one straight line through any mistakes made, ensuring they don’t cross out or scribble over any errors and ensure they don’t use an eraser on their work. Teachers/TA will rub out only.
- Children will write neatly, following the school’s handwriting formation from ‘Letter-join’ in all their work.
- Complete all their written work in pen, once they have been awarded their pen license for neat and sustained and fluent formation.
- Always use pencil when drawing, constructing tables, diagrams and charts.
- No free drawing in science, geography or history books.
In maths work, pupils should be reminded to:
- Write the short date for their work.
- Use pencil for all work.
- Use a ruler when drawing lines, constructing tables, diagrams and charts.
- Leave one empty line between calculations.
- Write one digit per square on the page, separating question numbers from digits within the calculation with bracket NOT a full stop.
- Children are not to use a rubber in their maths books.