Teaching and Learning

"When we set high expectations of children, we show that we believe in them." - Kim Bearden

 

Every child, irrespective of their starting point, can achieve academic and behavioural excellence through exceptional schooling. We take pride in supporting all children and young people to achieve these goals. At the heart of exceptional schooling is excellent teaching and learning.

At St Thomas a Becket, teaching and learning sits alongside keeping our children and young people safe as our number one priority. We take pride in ensuring our teaching and learning practices are research-informed in order to maximise outcomes and opportunities. Our children and young people will only get one shot at their education: we must make it count. We ensure teaching and learning remains our ‘main thing’.

‘Keep the main thing, the main thing.’
Stephen Covey

The aim is to share our expectations for teaching and learning alongside the continuous professional and learning development (CPLD) opportunities that are on offer, to support our classroom-based colleagues to achieve excellence in their teaching.

Our approach to teaching and learning is underpinned by the 6 EQUA Mead Essentials of Teaching and Learning: Behaviour and Engagement, Explicit Instruction, Adaptive Teaching, Modelling, Independent Application and Assessment & Feedback. These Essentials are the key elements in ensuring excellent teaching and learning occurs within our school. Our Essentials are based on a foundation of high behavioural expectations. Strong behavioural norms and routines will ensure we have the foundations upon which to build excellent pedagogy.

We believe that no teacher is ever the finished article: there is always room to develop ourselves. To give our best to our children and young people, we must invest in ourselves first. We take responsibility to develop our practice, through our cycle of CPD, which is linked to the EQUA Mead Essentials. All teachers will access specialist input at calendared training sessions, followed by the opportunity to put their learning into practice and be coached to refine it, termly. This process is further supported by a fortnightly teaching and learning bulletin, offering tips, sharing best practice and further research to dive into.

Supporting children and young people with SEND

The EQUA Mead Essentials and our approach to teaching and learning is ideally suited to supporting children and young people with additional learning needs. Ensuring that information is presented in small steps, that explanations are clear, that work is scaffolded appropriately, that we have high expectations of pupils regardless of prior attainment, that classrooms have clear behavioural routines, and that work is modelled expertly means we are providing excellent environments for all to learn.

Underpinning our provision for children and young people with SEND is high quality teaching. Overall, although additional adult support may be present, the teacher is still ultimately responsible for the learners in their classroom and should work closely with those colleagues to ensure the provision is of the highest possible standard.

equa mead teaching and learning handbook 2025 26 1 .pdf