Quality First Teaching
What is Quality First Teaching?Quality First Teaching (QFT) is a style of teaching that focuses on high quality and inclusive teaching for every child in a classroom. Quality First Teaching relies on a variety of learning strategies in order to be effective, like differentiated learning and the use of SEND resources.
In short, Quality First Teaching is an approach that highlights the need for a personalised learning experience and encourages greater inclusion of pupils with SEND needs.
Quality First Teaching is all about ensuring that each pupil receives teaching that suits their learning style. For example, if a student isn't able to grasp a certain teaching concept or idea, the teacher should have alternative ways of teaching the same concept. It's a teacher's duty to personalise their teaching to suit the needs of their pupils.
As part of a quality first teaching approach to improve inclusivity, there is the 'Three Waves of Intervention'
This three-tiered model provides a framework for teachers to follow in order to make their teaching more accessible and inclusive whilst reducing underachievement.
To find out more about our 'Three Waves of Intervention' approach, click here to visit our SEND Page.
What Does Quality First Teaching
Look Like at St Paul's?At St Paul's we aim to provide high quality teaching and to inspire a love of learning. Through religious education, collective worship and the values and ethos of our curriculum, we promote pupil’s spiritual and moral development to provide a basis for their life long learning.
Our teachers match the work to the needs of each individual and through reinforcement, positive feedback and the identification of the next steps in learning they move children to the next level.
We recognise the importance of involving parents and carers in their children’s education. We encourage parents and carers to play an active role in school life when ever they can and support their children and each other as part of a whole school community. Through newsletters, assemblies, open evenings, reports and parents'/carers' evenings we endeavour to keep our parents fully informed about their child’s educational journey.
At St Paul's we see homework as an opportunity for parents to engage with and support their child in their learning. All our children receive homework, carefully chosen to ensure it is of an appropriate level.
What we ProvideOur Pedagogy - How we Teach
At St Paul's we have researched how children learn and we have applied the principles that we have found to work the best for our children.
We have used the principles of:
Repetition, 'My Turn, your Turn' (taken from RWI)
A vocabulary and an oracy rich curriculum and classroom
Knowledgeable class teacher giving clear, direct instructions and assistance
Using effective, live and positive feedback, dealing with misconceptions immediately
Using different learning styles
Smaller than average teaching groups
Our Bespoke Curriculum Drivers
See It! Say It! Learn It! Use It!
Our curriculum is driven by the barriers to learning our children need to overcome to be able to learn at their best. Our learning approach ensures that different learning styles are used in each lesson.
Click here to visit our Curriculum Page.
Our Rigorous Approach to the Teaching of Phonics
We teach our children to read, using the phonics programme Read Write Inc. Our staff are well trained and teach phonics to a high standard.
Click here to visit our Phonics Page.
Whole Class Reading
Once our children have acquired the phonetic knowledge to read fluently, we continue our Read It Reading Journey with whole class reading. This continues to teach the children how to continue to be fluent readers. This ensures continuing fluency across Key Stage 2.
Click here to visit our Read It! Reading page.
Remember It!
We have extended our curriculum offer with Remember It!. Remember It!, is our process of linking our learning together.
It helps the children retrieve learning from past lessons and units of work, linking it together to form the Bigger Picture of their learning.
It is one of the processes in which the children's learning is embedded in their long term memory.
Personalised Learning
Peonalised learning is our approach which encourages the children to present their learning in an individualised way. This approach is in its infancy.
Everything in its Place
Our classrooms are well organised, where resources are easily accessible and labelled, so that children can access scaffolding when they need it.
Targeted Interventions
Through our summative assessment and Pupil Progress Meetings, we identify children who need intervention. An intervention is used to help a child to make sure that they make the correct amount of progress.
Visual Timetables
In all of our classrooms we have visual timetables which shows our children what lesson/activities are coming next during the day.
This is an approach that can help children feel safer in their learning environment as the day is planned out and predictable.
Communication with Parents/Carers regarding their child's progress
We offer our families 3 meetings per year with their class teacher, as well as a yearly report and 6 half termly curriculum newsletters.
Click here to visit our Class Newsletter Page.
Activity Days
We have a planned activity day every half term. Each activity day forms part of our wider curriculum and personal development.
Click here to visit our Activity Day Page.
Real Life Experiences
Real life experiences and visual aids form part of our curriculum which we call See It!
Real Life experiences, such as trips, visitors and demonstrations, bring learning to life for our children. We also never assume that a child will know what a teacher is describing, therefore we use lots of visual aids, video clips, animated stories and pictures.
Click here for our Real Life Experiences Page.
Click here for our Trips Page.
Our Writing Curriculum
We use the principles of Talk4Writing to teach our writing curriculum, however we have adapted it so that each unit of writing is based on a high quality whole text, rather than exerts.
From these whole text, the teachers write their own model texts, which allows each teacher to ensure that all the aspects of writing, that the children need to learn, are present.
Each aspect of learning is explicitly taught and the progress that the children make across a 3 week unit is obvious for all to see, especially the children.
Our Talk4Writing approach, allows all children of all abilities, to succeed, as they are given the tools for each piece of writing.
Click zato visit our Writing page.
Sticky Knowledge - Learn It!
Another approach we use to ensure our children retain new learning is our sticky knowledge quizzes.
At the beginning of our science, RE and foundation lessons the children complete a sticky knowledge quiz. this is a cumulative series of questions about the previous lessons from that unit of learning.
Knowledge Organisers
To aid our children with the new learning in foundation subjects, we produce knowledge oganisers for each new unit. Our knowledge organisers have key vocabulary and key facts that are essential for the learning in that unit. In history our knowledge organisers also always have a time line showing key events.
Our Extra Curricular Clubs
To ensure that our children have the opportunity to take part in a wide variety of experiences, that are not covered in our curriculum, we offer a wide range of extra curricular clubs, both after school and at dinner time.
These clubs range from sports, cooking, life skills to film and drama club.
Click here for our Extra Curricular Clubs Page.
Read It! Reading Journeys
To ensure that all of our children can read and also love to read, we have devised a whole school reading approach. We call this our Read It! Reading Journey.
During their reading journey, our children are exposed to a wide variety of high quality texts. We read for different purposes across both fiction and non-fiction books.
We have even incorporated whole class texts into our Talk4Writing programme.
Click here to visit our Reading Read It Page.
Steps to Mastery in Maths
Every maths lesson across the school begin with a session called Steps to Mastery.
Its focus is to allow the children to practise and apply key pieces of learning that they have been exposed to within, that school year. This pedagogical approach ensures that our children are regularly revisiting key skills to ensure that they are embedded in their long term memory.
Click here to visit our Maths Page.