Towards a Learning and Teaching Policy

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There has to be a central theme to any school, in terms of their approach to teaching and learning, ensuring that there is coherence and continuity throughout a child’s experience within the school. An overview of a policy is offered as a starting point for discussion and adaptation. It could be used as a whole, but any policy must reflect the local situation.

Learning and Teaching Policy

A Statement of School Vision

• Everyone involved with the educational process at X School is a partner in progress
• This, in terms of children, is encompassed in the motto Thinking, Working , Playing together.
• Educationally making guided progress, through individual and group effort.

Our Aim

A typical child leaving X School will have these attributes

• Confidence in themselves, as people and learners.
• Awareness of the world around them, locally and wider, showing sensitivity, an enquiring approach, and a developing sense of awareness of themselves as spiritual beings.
• Capable of working in many different ways, with different grouping of others, and be able to sustain effort when required.
• Solve problems with different, but developing, levels of independence.
• Think creatively and reflectively when appropriately challenged, organising their needs, and being able to talk clearly to anyone with an interest in their activities.
• Accept guidance to achieve the best they can, with a clear understanding of their strengths and areas for further improvement.

A policy for learning, achieving the vision

• Children, their thinking and learning, are our core purpose, within the context of a broad, balanced and relevantly challenging curriculum. They are to become active producers of learning, rather than passive consumers of teaching.
• Children will start as information gatherers, capable of clear description.
• Children will progressively become problem solvers, applying a range of relevant skills, able to articulate clearly in speech and then writing, the detail of their learning, and to have a developing repertoire of presentational skills through which they can show their ideas.
• Careful consideration of information, and logical thinking, together with the ability to explain their thoughts, using 2-D or 3-D models, will lead to secure links in learning.
• Learning processes will be clearly articulated to children, who should be able to explain what they are doing, and why.
• The processes through which the children will be challenged will be known to teachers, parents, support staff or any other assisting adult.
• The potential for learning across and between different abilities needs to be maintained, to ensure that children derive learning from as many sources as possible.
• The taught curriculum will be well taught, with teachers working to improve their personal skills and practice across the curriculum.
• ICT in all its forms will be a central tool of development.
• The school and each of its constituent parts, will see itself as part of a wider learning community, deriving information  and good practice from sources that complement our own developing practice.

Putting the vision into practice

Teachers at X School plan to ensure that the vision and aims are put into practice, employing methodologies outlined in the policy for learning, through an approach summarized as Analyse, Plan, Do, Review, Record, Report.

Analyse… Teachers will receive information from a range of sources about the prior attainment of each child. This will provide a framework upon which to base decisions about working arrangements, suitable objectives for learning and tasks to achieve these.

Plan… Teachers plan over different timescales, annual, based upon allocated topic specifications. It is for individual teachers to use these specs creatively to provide a dynamic approach to learning.

Contributing to Planning Detail

Whole of National Curriculum through School based Topic Specifications

Literacy and numeracy frameworks.

Planning at different levels

• Content
• Learning needs
• Space, timescales and resources

Do… Tasks given to children will be creative, challenging and engaging, leading to defined progress.

Task design. Each task will have a definite purpose in progressing an aspect of a child’s progress, known to the child and any assisting adult.

Activity presentation. All activity will be clearly presented and understood by children before being active.

Independence levels, skill, knowledge and attitude will all be considered when devising the task parameters, as the different learning attributes of individuals and groups should be encompassed in the task challenges.

Children working

• Understanding task… Children will have a clear grasp of what they are being challenged to achieve, be able to discuss and articulate purposes when asked.
• Task behaviours… Children will be expected to demonstrate appropriate approaches to tasks, developing persistence to achieve.
• Team working… Children will be challenged to operate as collaborative, independent learners on tasks specifically created to allow for qualities of cooperation to be developed.
• Oral skill…Children will develop appropriate descriptive, analytical, exploratory languages to communicate clearly to a peer or interested adult.
• Recording skill, written, pictorial, mathematical…Within any learning experience there will be opportunities for children to use different forms of recording to help them to remember sequences of events within an activity.
• Evaluation… Children learn about learning by doing, by reflecting on the process and activity, and evaluating changes to approaches for future reference.
• Review… Children will develop as primary evaluators of their drafts. Peer reviews will be developed over time, with the teacher giving informative feedback to help with the next phase of development.

By being given tasks that they will need to discuss, decide on action, carry out, review, re-evaluate and repeat, they will develop an insight into the ways in which adults work and solve problems.

Outcomes..Review

• Teacher as reviewer and quality controller…Any piece of work from a child is the current draft capable of being reviewed and improved. Ongoing oral feedback should support the child within the learning process. Marking should provide opportunities for advice, and an overview of quality.
• Feedback to children…should enable each child to review their own needs in learning for subsequent pieces of activity.
• Room for improvement… advice on areas for development.
• Objective and subjective…Correcting spelling or an aspect of grammar may be clearly objective, whereas a commentary starting “I liked…..” would be subjective.
• Moderation…At intervals it is clearly good practice to share views on achievement. Moderation allows a consensus view about a discrete piece of produced work.

Record… Teachers will keep records which assist them in progressing learning for individual children.

Report… At half year and year end, teachers will write reports to inform parents about achievements and room for improvement.

Review, Recording and Reporting

• To colleagues
• To parents
• Significant others