Teaching and Learning at Djanogly Sherwood Academy

Our Curriculum Vision

At Djanogly Sherwood Academy we believe that our children deserve a curriculum that promotes aspiration through experiences that broaden their perspectives. Our curriculum is underpinned by our vision ‘Where everyone belongs’ and our value of respect, resilience, relationships and resourcefulness. Our children need a curriculum that provides them with the knowledge they need to enter the next stage of their education successfully.  Our curriculum inspires and engages our learners, expands their vocabulary and captures their imagination.  Our curriculum provides challenge to give our children the confidence to choose and own their future.

What Teaching and Learning looks like at DSH

‘Ensuring every teacher is supported in delivering high-quality teaching is essential to achieving the best outcomes for all pupils, particularly the most disadvantaged among them’ (EEF).

Significant professional development time is committed to the delivery of high-quality teaching. This takes place during staff meetings, as well as A4L time where staff are given opportunities to focus on their own particular professional development goals. Subject leaders are empowered to deliver staff meetings, demonstrating how their colleagues can teach their subjects effectively and in a way that aligns with our whole school curriculum. Subject leaders work together in subject hubs, which are lead by a member of SLT who supports them to develop their leadership role.

How are we using Walk Thru’s to develop best practice at DSH?

‘Walkthrus’ are used as a framework for staff to develop their teaching practice. Staff have used staff meetings and worked together in triads to practice and coach each other in the following strategies so that it can be used effectively to impact on student outcomes.

How are these strategies being utilised within lessons?

Our curriculum lessons utilise these principles to ensure that children are developing their long term memory – they know more and remember more -  and are not subject to cognitive overload. We have thought carefully how to utilise these strategies in each part of the lesson sequence. How these are used is outlined below.

Modelling New Learning

 When modelling new learning teachers and teaching assistants follow a model adapted from ‘Barak Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction’ (Sherrington, T).

This structure is based on a ‘My Turn, Our Turn, Your Turn’ approach where children are able to see new learning effectively modelled by an adult,  have opportunities to practice under close supervision, before working independently. This allows children to build understanding gradually, developing their confidence and fluency. Teachers and teaching assistants use this model in all subjects within the curriculum, and interleave subject specific pedagogies into their lessons to ensure that children recognise the distinctive nature of each subject.

The purpose of this structure is to allow children to move gradually from dependence to independence with confidence and understanding.

The purpose of each stage is outlined below:-

Chunking Learning

During some lessons, where new learning may involve particularly complex substantive knowledge, or where there is a focus on providing children with opportunities to ‘Work as a…’ following a specific subjects pedagogical approaches (disciplinary knowledge) it is common for children to experience ‘Cognitive Overload’ (where children are holding too much information in their limited working memories). In these instances, teachers may scaffold by breaking the learning into manageable chunks. Our lesson structure can be easily adapted to support this.

Retrieval Practice and Assessment

The reason that retrieval practice is important is not only because it interrupts the process of forgetting, but also because the struggle of recalling the information helps strengthen the memory. Having to get information out of the brain is a more effective way to learn than re-reading or re-studying. Our lesson sequences provide opportunities for retrieval practice at the start of each lesson and through curriculum assessment opportunities, which include the use of knowledge organisers, and assessment quizzes.