St Aidan's C of E Academy

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Curriculum

At the heart of St Aidan’s is the desire to pursue excellence by meeting the learning needs of every pupil, so that they are inspired to grow into independent learners and make outstanding progress.

Our vision is to ensure high standards for every learner in a stimulating and active learning environment. Staff across all subjects and year groups share a consistent approach to teaching and learning, providing substantial challenge for all pupils as well as providing an appropriate level of guidance and support where necessary. The key components of a typical lesson are included in this section, enabling you to gain an insight into the experiences of our pupils whilst also highlighting the way teachers assess pupil progress and inform their planning of subsequent lessons.

Learning Objectives

Each lesson that is delivered will include a key objective that the teacher would like all pupils to achieve. Each objective will include a command word which is taken from Bloom's taxonomy. Bloom's taxonomy is a hierarchy of skills which categorises tasks by the level of demand that is placed upon the learner.

For example, the graphic below shows that tasks which require pupils to 'describe' or 'identify' are taken from the 'Knowledge' category and place a relatively low level of demand upon pupils. Tasks of this nature would typically be encountered at the beginning of a new topic when depth of knowledge is limited. Tasks which require pupils to 'Assess' or 'Evaluate' appear in the 'Evaluation' category are more demanding and would appear far later in the learning journey.

Typically, as pupils are introduced to new topics, it is expected that they would work their way up the Bloom's pyramid with tasks increasing in demand as subject content becomes more familiar and pupils are able to demonstrate a secure understanding.

Retrieval

In each lesson pupils are given numerous retrieval opportunities which challenges them to recall and apply facts and information from previous learning. At the beginning of each lesson, pupils will complete a short retrieval task that will be based upon learning that has taken place in the previous lesson. At the end of the lesson, pupils will be provided with a task which assesses the learning that has just taken place. At this point they will also be challenged to recall information from learning that may have taken place at any point in their learning journey whether that be the previous lesson, previous week, previous term or even previous year(s). These retrieval opportunities are supplemented by short tasks that appear intermittently during lessons which constantly allows assessment to be taking place. The aim is to prepare pupils for formal, termly assessments which are cumulative and can include questions on recent content as well as material that has been covered in the past.

Assessment and Feedback

At the end of every lesson, teachers review the work completed by their pupils and document their findings in their own 'Making Learning Visible' journal. In these journals, staff will record how successful pupils have been in meeting the lesson's objective whilst also identifying examples of excellent practice that can be shared with the class in the following lesson. The process also enables teachers to identify any misconceptions that may have arisen during the course of the lesson, at which point they will factor into their planning opportunities to address these misconceptions, be it on an individual or whole class level. This ensures that assessment is very much a live process meaning that any feedback given to pupils is instant and meaningful. Not only this, but it also ensures that assessment becomes a vital part of the planning process, giving teachers a clear picture of where pupils are in their learning journey and allowing them to structure future learning in a way that maximises progress.