Teaching and Learning Strategy

At Northstowe, want great teaching and learning to take place in every classroom at Northstowe, so our curriculum aims can be met, and our students can fulfil their potential. We want to draw upon evidence informed practice and research to ensure that we’re being as effective and as inclusive as possible. We want learning to transform the lives of our students, and to leave a legacy of knowledge, skills and experience that enriches our young people’s future.

When implementing our Teaching and Learning Strategy, we follow 3 principles:

• Use Northstowe’s Teaching & Learning standards to inform and shape all teaching practice.
• Remove literacy and numeracy barriers as quickly as possible.
• Be flexible and adaptive with student grouping, lesson planning, and provision.

Further details of these principles:

• Northstowe’s Teaching & Learning standards are informed by 6 pedagogical principles (taken from ‘Making Every Lesson Count’ Allison and Tharby, 2015). All colleagues are expected to implement these principles using a ‘tight but loose’ approach. Teaching practice should be firmly rooted in the evidence informed strategies underpinning these principles, yet delivered in a style that is authentic and unique to each individual teacher.
• We do however have some ‘tight’ expectations of common language and approaches that we want all Northstowe teachers to incorporate into their teaching.
• We believe that removing literacy and numeracy barriers for our students is key to ensuring that students can learn effectively which is why it constitutes one of the core intentions of our curriculum. This is reflected in the time and resource we invest in our Whole School Fluency Strategy and PREP programme to help removing these barriers for students.
• We use different grouping strategies (e.g mixed ability and streamed) for different subjects, and at different times in KS3 and KS4. Groupings are regularly reviewed by Senior Leaders and teaching staff to ensure they provide the best learning environment for our students.
• In our Subject Curriculum Handbooks, we use Long and Medium Term Plans to identify the knowledge & skills that we intend students to acquire and develop but refrain from overly perspective planning that restricts AfL (Assessment for Learning) being able to shape the direction of individual lessons.
• We quality assure the Teaching and Learning that takes place in our classrooms through a range of methods, such as Student experience reviews, SLT and Lead teacher drop-ins and T+L reviews, Professional conversations and Trust led Peer Reviews.

Teaching and Learning Strategy Documents