Stoke Primary School Teaching and Learning Policy - Early Years

1 Vision

Believe and Achieve!

Stoke Primary School seeks to ensure that every member of the community can 

Believe and Achieve.

The learning systems that are established within this policy place each and every child at the centre of their learning.  By empowering each child with skills, knowledge and learning systems they can significantly impact on their own achievement and seek to be the best they can be.

2 Aims and Objectives

This teaching and learning policy places teaching staff as lead practitioners in determining the implementation of key principles to ensure high standards in all teaching and learning to enable all pupils to achieve strong outcomes in a broad and balanced curriculum.

We aim to achieve the following:

• A high level of English, mathematics and science skill to support deep understanding in all foundation subjects.
• A curriculum that is rich and provides a wealth of skills to support lifelong learning 
• Resilient and curious minds which seek to learn more each day 
• Pride in achievement and a strong understanding of those achievements.
• Independent young people who are confident, flexible and able to cooperate with others.
• Respectful and empathetic citizens of our multi-cultural society 
• Effective links between the school, the child’s home and the community, which promote knowledge, teamwork and high expectation

3 Key Principles of Effective Learning at Stoke Primary

Stoke understands the importance of ensuring our children develop their curricular skills within a framework that supports the development of lifelong learning to enable them the chance to fulfill their dreams.  To facilitate this we have three key aspects of effective learning.

• Widening Horizons

Stoke Primary School acknowledges that our children have wide ranging experiences that they bring to their learning.  We also understand that many children have had very limited experiences prior to starting at Stoke.

It is integral to our systems that we always seek to ensure we create the widest context and ensure we broaden the understanding for all our children.  This forms a key basis for immersive topic approaches.

This is facilitated by

• Contextualising learning with experiences
• Strategic planning of immersive topics
• Vocabulary rich learning landscape

• Characteristics of Effective Learning

Children at Stoke Primary School are taught to recognise the Characteristics of Effective Learning as key components that lead to lifelong learning. Children learn how the characteristics of effective learning enable them to:

• Challenge themselves
• Persevere
• Focus
• Explore
• Reflect
• Celebrate

Stoke Primary School applies a progression of these qualities throughout all year groups as a structure that underpins good learning.  The language and its application develops through school and our children develop these qualities understanding how the characteristics help them learn.

The qualities look different for different children in each year group. We teach children that the qualities can be applied to all learning situations and that within each quality they can use the Characteristics of Effective Learning to give them the more detailed language they may need. Alongside this, it is vital that children are given metacognitive strategies to help them learn. 

3 Planning and Assessment

We believe that planning and assessment are inextricably linked and are fundamental to effective learning.  Teachers have the responsibility to assimilate core information to ensure that planned learning is tailored to meet the needs of the class and through effective assessment, progress can be clearly defined.

Teachers plan in year groups and then tailor plans and resources for each class’s attainment needs. Teachers plan using two formats: topic planning, weekly planning.

• Topic Planning

Stoke Primary School has two approaches to curricular topic planning.

• Immersive topicsseek to combine English and foundation subjects into an immersive and interconnected learning experience.  Each curricular area supports and strengths the others with context and specific learning
• Discrete topicsenable teachers to ensure full coverage of all areas of the curriculum are supported, but in this context the elements do not necessarily link.

Topic planning is the key vehicle to contextualise, systematically develop and apply curricular skills.  The format for planning is designed to ensure that all topics are tailored to the specific learning needs of the cohort.

Immersive topic learning is understood to be an effective way of building secure and robust skills.  Where appropriate, topics should include close links to the English skills being taught.  

Key factors

• Rationale – why and how is this topic tailored to ensure that it will meet the learning needs of the cohort
• Data – using data from both core and foundation subject assessments supports the targeting of skills required to ensure that all elements of the topic are developmental for all children
• Learning qualities and Characteristics of Effective Learning – this supports the strategic approach to building learning language within the topic and ensures the topic enables the skills of learning to progress
• Chronology of the topic.  This enables key milestones to be identified to ensure the topic has pace and expectation of outcomes.
• Metacognitive strategies – this enables children to understand how they learn, what helps them and to become proactive learners that reach their full potential