At Broadstone First School we believe in the concept of lifelong learning and are committed to the idea that both adults and children learn new things every day. We maintain that learning should be a rewarding and enjoyable experience for everyone. Through our teaching we equip children with the skills, knowledge and understanding necessary to be able to make informed choices about the important things in their lives.

We believe that appropriate teaching and learning experiences help children to lead happy and rewarding lives.We recognise that people learn best in different ways. At our school we provide a rich and varied learning environment and experiences that allow children to develop their skills and abilities to their full potential.

Through our teaching we aim to:

• Instil in learners the values of creativity, respect and independence.

This means we will strive to:

• Enable children to become confident, resourceful, enquiring and independent learners
• Foster children’s self-esteem and help them build positive relationships with other people
• Develop children’s self-respect and encourage children to respect the ideas, attitudes, values and feelings of others
• Show respect for all cultures and, in so doing, to promote positive attitudes towards other people;
• Enable children to understand their community and help them feel valued as part of this community;
• Help children grow into reliable, independent and positive citizens.

We acknowledge that people learn in many different ways and we recognise the need to develop strategies that allow all children to learn in ways that best suit them. We are currently developing strategies to support a range of differing learning styles, with the school values being the building blocks of all decisions about learning in our school.

We encourage children to develop strategies for their own learning, to be involved in reviewing the way they learn, and to reflect on how they learn – what helps them learn and what makes it difficult for them to learn.

Research shows that learners learn better when hydrated. Water is made available throughout the day via individually named water bottles on the tables.

When teaching we focus on motivating the children and building on their skills, knowledge and understanding of the curriculum. We use the national curriculum to guide our teaching. This sets out the objectives and details to be taught to Foundation, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.

We plan our lessons with clear learning objectives. We take these objectives from the National Curriculum or the National Literacy or National Numeracy Strategy. Our lesson plans contain information about the tasks to be set, the resources needed, and relevant assessment of children’s work. We evaluate all lessons so that we can modify and improve our teaching in the future.

Our classrooms are attractive learning environments. We believe that a stimulating environment sets the climate for learning, and a well-organised and managed classroom promotes independent use of resources and high-quality thinking and learning by the children.We believe that in an atmosphere of trust and respect for all, positive achievements can be made and that learners need to be in a “State for Learning” in order to learn best. It is for this reason that we take time in the morning to prepare the learners for the day. They will be greeted with a smile, music will be played in the classroom and a thinking skills activity is prepared so the learners are gainfully involved in a task to help them settle for the day. The class teacher will take time with a few children to give them specific attention.

States for Learning time will also happens at the end of the day. Children and staff will review the day and celebrate success. Less positive events will be dealt with and closed. We believe that this will ensure the children have a positive attitude when they return to school the following day.

More information regarding Teaching & Learning, including the full policy, can be obtained from the school.

Please click a heading