Pillar 4: Optimising progress

Our vision, values and beliefs.  | How these translate into classroom practice.  |  The impact on our children.

4.1 Activating Prior Knowledge

At Avonwood we...

• use daily reviews for activating prior learning in readiness for that day's learning.
• implement retrieval by spacing practice over time with weekly and monthly reviews, attenuating forgetting and strengthening retrieval.
• engage children in daily learning by building confidence through recall of prior learning.
• use questioning during recall to assess for suppressed misconceptions and gaps in knowledge.

We believe that...

• retrieval practice aids later retention.
• retrieval and successive learning identifies misconceptions and gaps in knowledge.
• activating prior knowledge and making links between areas of learning deepens children's understanding.
• reviewing prior knowledge daily strengthens connections between ideas children have learnt and this can then be built upon.

The impact is...

• children can recall words, concepts and procedures with minimal effort when the material is needed to solve a problem or learn new material.
• cognitive load is reduced enabling the acquisition of new knowledge deployment of critical thinking skills.
• every time a memory is retrieved it becomes deeper, stronger and easier to access in the future which leads to fluent recall.

4.2 Practise Makes Progress

At Avonwood we...

• aim for 'desirable difficulty'.
• introduce materials in small steps and spend appropriate time working through examples to ensure we explain our reasoning to serve as a model to the students.
• spend time during guided practice modelling, rephrasing, elaborating and applying new material.
• aid rehearsal by asking questions and probing deeper to ensure that pupils have processed the material.

We believe that...

• those who practice the most, forget the least.
• securing a high level of success during guided practice leads to greater success during independent practice.
• guided practice allows children time to use and apply knowledge, whilst the teacher checks for understanding.
• practice routines help to ensure motivation levels remain high.

The impact is...

• through practice, factual recall becomes automatic and fundamental skills are congnitively low-friction which frees up space in the working memory.
• practice provides a platform for new learning.
• spaced and distributed practice combats the 'forgetting curve': overlearning protects information from fading.
• practice and repetition lead to a deeper level of understanding which can in turn be applied to a variety of contexts.

4.3 Actionable Feedback

At Avonwood we...

• give daily whole class verbal feeback and live mark during lessons.
• ask questions to elicit and check children's understanding.
• assess children's work against success criteria, recognising effort and indicating next steps.
• use marking to give focused feedback in order to inform children of their next steps.

We believe that...

• feedback as an integral part of teaching practice.
• misconceptions and gaps in knowledge can be addressed as a collective.
• asking meaningful questions that target essential learning provides an insight into children's thinking.
• identifying and overcoming misconceptions during the lesson enables high learning outcomes every time.

The impact is...

• teachers know what the children know already, what they need to know and what is required to bridge that gap.
• curriculum content being taught is adjusted and relevant to the children in each classroom.
• misconceptions can be addressed during each lesson whilst learning content is current: what we learn first we learn most deeply.
• children become reflective learners, being aware of their next steps.