At Heckington St. Andrew’s C of E Primary school, we place great value on the development of children as individuals and providing them with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to prepare them for the challenges in Key Stage One and beyond. We therefore aim to embed the right habits for learning through the characteristics of effective teaching and learning – play and exploration, active learning, and creativeand critical thinking. We value imagination and creativity and seek to create a sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning through a vibrant continuous indoor and outdoor provision
Pupils learn through a balance of child-initiated and adult-directed activities. The timetable is carefully structured so that children have rigorous directed teaching in maths and phonics every day. These sessions are followed by group work where children work with a member of staff to develop their individual targets. This focused group time means the teacher can systematically check for understanding, identify, and respond to misconceptions quickly and provide real-time verbal feedback which results in a strong impact on the acquisition of new learning.
Children are provided with plenty of time to engage in ‘exploration’ throughout the variety of experiences carefully planned to engage and challenge them in the provision.
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum and topics are taught through quality books. Children follow the rigorous and highly successful Read, Write Inc program faithfully so that they meet good outcomes for reading at the end of Year 1. We follow the Maths Mastery approach in Reception through Maths no Problem with an emphasis on studying key skills of number, calculation, and shape so that pupils develop deep understanding and the acquisition of mathematical language. Pupils learn through games and tasks using concrete manipulatives which are then rehearsed and applied to their own learning during exploration.
