Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers and families across the country have provided extraordinary support to help children learn at home. At Mapplewell, we are proud of the high-quality remote education we offered for our children during school closures to ensure their learning continued to progress. However, for many children, school closures will have had an impact on their learning and wellbeing as being in school continues to be the best environment for children to learn. With this in mind, we will continue to provide a recovery programme which will run through the Summer Term.
This document is designed to summarise the strategies that MPS is putting in place as part of our response to the pandemic.
The EEF state that it is important to recognise that every school will have been affected by Covid-19 differently and school leaders and teachers continue to be best placed to understand the needs of their school communities. The right way to support pupils will differ between schools and must be informed by the professional judgement of teachers and school leaders.
They also make note that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are likely to have been affected particularly by school closures and may need more support to return to school and settle back into school life. This will be addressed in more detail in our PP spending plan.
In reviewing our recovery programme, we have used the EEF COVID-19 support guide to ensure our practise is informed by extensive research.
It is important that all children are given the support needed to make good progress. Our quest, our mission as educators, is to ensure that all children receive a high-quality education that promotes their development and equips them with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life, leading them back to their rightful status as fully engaged, authentic learners.
Our curriculum, through the initial stages, will prioritise identifying gaps and re-establishing good progress in the essentials (phonics and reading, increasing vocabulary, writing and mathematics) whilst remaining broad and ambitious for all.
High expectation, high quality and high engagement have been the key strands to our remote learning and we promote this throughout our remote education offer. We have taught the same broad & balanced curriculum remotely as we do in school wherever possible and appropriate. This consistency of approach through mirroring the school timetable will ease transition, as the planning and sequencing of lessons has continued to follow the same routines as in school.
During the first spring half term, class teachers have continued to use formative assessment and tracking documents to monitor pupil progress. These rigorous approaches to assessments will support class teachers to identify areas where pupils are likely to require additional support and provide opportunities for teachers to share information about pupils’ strengths. This ensures that curriculum planning on return is informed by an assessment of pupils’ starting points and gaps in their knowledge, and an understanding of what is the most critical content for progression.
No, we will continue to use accelerated learning are our teaching and learning approach for the delivery of our curriculum.
Our unwavering commitment to delivering highly effective teaching and learning is paramount. The accelerated learning approach provides opportunities to build on prior learning and develop skills and knowledge through a consistent cycle of connection, activation, activity, demonstration and consolidation. High levels of engagement are achieved through purposeful and stimulating activities which absorb pupils in learning and also through providing opportunities for pupils to work collaboratively.
Core knowledge and skills are at the heart of the learning process. A gather, skills, apply approach to planning and delivery of lessons is taken across school to ensure children develop a deep understanding and are able to apply these in a range of situations.
The curriculum we will offer will still be broad and balanced; however, opportunities for Reading, Writing and Maths links, in wider curriculum subjects, will be made to maximise opportunities for learning to be embedded. This will be achieved by identifying opportunities across the curriculum so children read widely, and develop their knowledge and vocabulary.
The taught curriculum for each year group will be carefully planned ensuring it meets needs. Curriculum planning will be informed by autumn term assessments of pupils and employing the effective use of regular formative assessment to identify gaps in their knowledge. As a result, this will be 'dove tailed' into the current spring and summer term curriculum to ensure a recovery approach is taken and not just the teaching of the missed curriculum. This ensures children are 'catching up' and not just 'keeping up'.
Through this academic year, including during recent school closures, trackers have been used to identify current attainment and gaps in learning. This, alongside HCAT year on a page documents, will be used to identify missed learning from the summer term. Where necessary, in certain year groups, 'mini' baseline assessments will be used to identify particular areas where pupils have forgotten or misunderstood key concepts, to ensure that new material being covered builds on secure foundations. This data will also be used to identify pupils who would benefit from additional catch-up support.
In order to further promote progress, effective formative assessment, marking and feedback and adult interaction within lessons is firmly embedded into our approach to teaching and learning. All pupils are supported to develop, progress and move their learning forward through support, questioning and feedback. Pupils demonstrate the impact this has on improving their learning through editing and response.
Careful timetabling of the school day will allow for more opportunities to carry out targeted whole class and small group interventions outside of the daily literacy and maths lessons. These sessions will vary in focus but will address identified gaps for all abilities to allow for learning to be built on a secure knowledge base. These sessions will be run daily.
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