Learning Through Values  

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Our core Christian Values of Compassion, Courage and Fairness run through every aspect of our teaching and learning. We believe our children deserve to leave our school with a body of knowledge that will allow them to progress successfully in the next phase of education and into a life filled with a passion for learning. 
 

Our community needs a curriculum that is rich in talk as we have a significant number of children starting school with speech and language issues. Our pedagogy is based on copious research that shows children retain knowledge when they are emotionally engaged with learning (for example Chai et al 2017). Mantle of the Expert (MoE) – a drama based pedagogy – which develops emotional concern (compassion) around equality and justice (Fairness) and encourages children to stand up for the underdog (Courage), is used extensively in to help children retain knowledge in their long term memories when learning about the humanities. MoE is rich in talk meeting the speech and language needs of children from Reception to Year 6.
Mastery learning is used in both Maths and Reading to ensure that children from disadvantaged backgrounds make the best possible progress while high achieving children are challenged to broaden and deepen their understanding.

We support our children using evidence based  techniques promoting learning through talk such as: Read Write Inc, Talk4Writing, Talkboost KS1&KS2, Early Talk, Elklan and Speech and Language interventions.

Reading is woven into our curriculum with a class book studied each term in addition to the progress children make through our carefully selected books, matching precisely the child’s stage in reading development. Reading for Pleasure is central to our approach with all children from Year R to Year 6 taking home books they have chosen with the careful help of a member of staff.

Teachers and leaders seek constant improvement by keeping abreast of the latest and best evidence-based practice. Our staff have the Compassion to ensure our neediest children get the help they need; the sense of Fairness that makes them strive for all the children to have an excellent bank of knowledge to take forward and the Courage to continually seek to improve their performance for the benefit of the children.