Our approach to Teaching and Learning at Bacon's College is about curriculum implementation of powerful knowledge. Teaching and Learning supports our curriculum by ensuring that lessons build on prior learning and provides sufficient opportunity for guided and independent practice.
The Bacon’s Way is underpinned by cognitive science and evidence informed practice. We use Barak Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction (Principles of Instruction, Barak Rosenshine, 2012) to ensure our lessons follow a simple instructional core:
I teach: Using teacher modelling and explanation to introduce information in small steps
We check: Checking for understanding, and addressing mistakes and misconceptions
You practise: Ensuring pupils consolidate their learning and are challenged to think hard, and produce work that is a ‘product of their own thinking’.
Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction support curriculum implementation but ensuring that pupils regularly recall prior learning. Our Do Now tasks at the start of every lesson encourage support students with retrieving knowledge from their long term memory, as well as supporting with the mastery of skills each subject area.
“Each subject area has some set of facts that, if committed to long term memory, aids problem-solving by freeing working memory. Existing knowledge and skills can then be applied to new contexts.” Deans for Impact, The Science of Learning, 2016
We also use several Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion techniques to support with the practical implementation the ‘Rosenshine Principles’. By using common language such as ‘strong start’, ‘cold calling’ and ‘show me’, we ensure teachers have shared understanding, and supports the working memories of all of our pupils, but particularly those with special educational needs.
We are particularly conscious of the role that literacy and vocabulary plays in unlocking the curriculum for all pupils. Our teachers explicitly teach the meaning of subject-specific language, using strategies such as ‘dual coding’ and ‘choral response’, and pupils are routinely encouraged to revisit key vocabulary through the use of Do Nows and retrieval based homework.
In order for the mastery approach to be effective (i.e. children learn what they are expected to in the year they are expected to), early intervention is essential for securing the progress of some pupils. We aim to promptly identify and support pupils who start secondary school without a secure grasp of reading, writing and mathematics, so that they can access the full curriculum.
Everything from which children learn in school – the taught subject timetable, the approach to spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, the co-curricular provision and the ethos and ‘hidden curriculum’ of the school – are to be seen as part of the school curriculum. Our principle of ‘Education with Character’ is delivered through the curriculum in this broadest sense.
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