Teaching
Wellacre Academy is a close-knit, supportive and welcoming community. Our staff all share a strong work-ethic, enjoy collaboration and are open to new ideas and techniques. Above all, we love working with young people and want to help each student achieve their very best. We believe that every staff member has a significant impact on our students' daily lives and subscribe to the philosophy that we are all here to enable students to thrive and succeed.
A central tenet of our teaching and learning philosophy here at Wellacre, is that we strive to enable every teacher to grow professionally, we do 'fewer things the same way', we have an evidenced informed 'Teaching, Learning and Behaviour Manifesto', based on Rosenshine's Principles of Direct Instruction. Our staff subscribed to Tom Sherrington's Walk Thru and Adam Boxer's Carousel for Learning and Teaching platforms to support professional development.
We place a strong emphasis on high quality teaching that is based on research and proven to help students to learn effectively. Teachers use clear, consistent approaches from our own Manifesto, that support students to build knowledge, develop understanding and work towards 'knowing more, remembering more and doing more".
Students are aware of these learning techniques and are taught how they help them to succeed. These approaches are below, so you can see how learning is supported in school.
Routines for Learning include an independent learning task called a Do Now, this maximises learning time by giving students an opportunity to independently recall prior knowledge. It is low stakes and is intended to build confidence and support staff in spotting any misconceptions.
Questioning and Checking for Understanding teachers will use Cold Calling Name at the End, this means all students are focused and encourages participation from everyone and helps build confidence over time. It allows teachers to ask questions and invite students to respond without hands being raised. Teachers regularly check that students understand the learning by asking questions, using short tasks, using mini whiteboards or reviewing answers together under the visualiser. This allows teachers to quickly adapt their lessons to address any misunderstandings before moving on.
Modelling, Explaining and Feeding back teachers explicitly share the purpose of what students are learning and explain the why, this helps our students to develop intrinsic motivation. We want our students to develop a love of learning, so teachers help them to see what a successful application of knowledge looks like. Teachers use scaffolding and chunk learning, alongside live modelling of the steps to follow under the visualiser. Teachers circulate the classroom actively seeking examples to share and remedy any errors. Teachers use ongoing formative assessment to gather real time feedback on student learning, so that teachers can respond and adjust their instruction accordingly. Written feedback focuses on giving students clear, specific actions that they can take to improve.
Oracy Routines students are sometimes asked to respond together, in 'choral responses' to questions or prompts, this reinforces learning, eg. Using vocabulary in answers from key word pink boxes. At other times there are opportunities for students to 'Turn and Talk' in a purposeful way, or students may engage in 'I Say You Say', so that they can build their Tier 3 vocabulary and improve their pronunciation.
We believe that we are all on a journey of continuous improvement and, as such, we are always reflecting on our practice. We have high expectations of every person in our school community. Every member of staff strives to be better every single day, and this message is openly communicated to our students. This culture of open-mindedness and collaboration extends from the most experienced teachers to trainees, and we push all of our staff to learn from each other. Staff drop into one another's lessons and give constructive feedback; we consider feedback a gift. Our students also thrive on feedback and action improvements to their work. We celebrate and encourage learning from mistakes.
