Teaching and Learning at Capital

This last half-term has seen many advancements for teaching and learning at Capital. We kicked off the term with the launch of two very exciting initiatives. First of all we shared the final version of The Capital Classroom Principles with all staff. These are a set of principles that staff have created together in a dedicated INSET day, which summarises our expectations of what makes a very effective lesson at Capital City. We measure ourselves against these principles, which we believe provide students with the best learning experience and will result in the best pupil progress possible.

The second initiative was The Capital Classroom site, an online manual that encompasses everything related to teaching and learning in the Academy. It is a portal for all staff to find key information around our policies and practices but beyond that, it is a tool for development, where staff will find resources to support their practice on a day-to-day basis.

Our fantastic teachers have continued to engage in our Teaching and Learning Communities programme, improving their use of formative assessment to ensure all our students receive the support and challenge they need to make the best progress in lessons. It has been very rewarding to see that the techniques learnt during these professional development sessions are becoming embedded in our practice and used to the best effect in so many lessons!

Best practice seen across the school is now summarised in The Capital Classroom Directory of Effective Teaching, which colleagues can access to identify support for improving an area of their practice. Furthermore, post-holders are now even better equipped to identify these improvements after attending our in-house training on effective learning observation.

Students in all year groups have engaged in a variety of sessions to improve their revision skills, understanding how we can train our memory and create an effective revision timetable. Through our Personal Development programme, they have continued to learn about mindsets, how to overcome obstacles and turn mistakes into learning opportunities, all of which will support them to become more independent learners.

We look forward to continuing our work together to develop our practice further and are very excited to see how our students are embracing the changes we are making!

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Teaching and Learning Community Workshops

Last month saw the launch of our Teaching and Learning Workshops, which were led by our brilliant Teaching Leads. As a means of developing our colleague’s efforts and engagement with the SSAT Embedding Formative Assessment CPD, each of the 15 minute workshops focused on key strategies which teachers could use in their own classrooms. The sessions focused on:

• Peer Assessment
• Critical Thinking
• Learning Stations
• Debating Big Questions