How a shared Pedagogy improves our pupils’ prospects.
Pedagogy is the science and art of teaching. Having a well-thought-out pedagogy improves the quality of our teaching and the way students learn, helping them gain a deeper grasp of fundamental material. Being mindful of the way we teach also helps us better understand how to help children achieve deeper learning.
At Solebay Primary Academy, and in every other school in Paradigm Trust, our pedagogy is about using research-based methods to teach the right things effectively while at the same time recognising the needs of our pupils. With children only having a finite number of hours in school, the time we have to educate them is limited. This is why it is absolutely crucial to optimise those precious hours, using the correct strategy to ensure children make the most progress. It must challenge the highest attaining pupils and close learning gaps when they appear.
We do this through thoughtfully crafted teacher-centric lessons as these have been shown to be the most effective. We then support this approach with pupil-centred learning when learners are ready to take advantage of it. Solebay children get great satisfaction from learning knowledge and skills which they know is important and which they find stimulating and exciting. They are guided through step by step, so they experience success at each stage and at the end are able to produce work that they are proud of.
Our research-based methods are mainly taken from two titles – the first is Teach Like a Champion, a collection of techniques which combine to deliver incredibly effective learning to the children. Over the last three years we have added Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction, which establishes ten different strategies for teaching and assessing. The two works complement each other, providing a well-rounded base on which to build our pedagogy.
By using the same pedagogy across Solebay there is consistency in the way we teach, in the way we behave and in the way we apply our rules, from Early Years right through to Year Six which hugely benefits both pupils and staff. However, we understand every class and every child is different, so our pedagogy is flexible, giving our teachers the tools for each individual situation and can adapt the strategies to fit their circumstances, while still retaining the underlying rationale.
It also enables us to make continuous improvements to our teaching. When one teacher makes a small adaptation to the shared pedagogy which proves successful, it is then easily put into practice across every Solebay class and at the other Paradigm Trust schools too. In the same way we benefit from improvements made elsewhere in the Trust, so we can be sure we are doing the best for every child at Solebay Primary Academy, ensuring at the end of a child’s school career s/he will be well prepared to flourish and lead a positive, fulfilling life.