Teaching and Learning

In order for all students to acquire the knowledge, skills and cultural capital essential for their future success, we focus on high quality, adaptive teaching to ensure that long-term learning and progress are achieved by all students. In particular, we ensure that all pupils are challenged by teaching to the top and scaffolding the learning of those who need extra support.

Our approach to teaching and learning is firmly rooted in the latest and most effective educational research. We believe that having high expectations for students and ourselves will have positive benefits for the whole school community. Therefore, we have identified the essential elements of a lesson that ensure all teaching is effective. Teachers make use of the following principles when planning their lessons:

● Every lesson has a clear purpose
● Knowledge acquisition is sequenced so that new material builds on existing knowledge
● Retrieval practice is used to activate and consolidate prior learning
● New content is explained and modelled effectively in manageable chunks
● Strategies for the completion of tasks and exam questions are clearly modelled
● Guided as well as independent practice encourages collaborative and independent learning. Opportunities are regularly provided for application of knowledge and critical analysis of unfamiliar concepts
● Checks of students’ understanding allow teachers to identify gaps or misconceptions in learning and adapt their teaching accordingly.
● Reviews of learning ensure that students are aware of their progress during lessons. They are then able to plan their revision before assessments using metacognitive strategies.
● Feedback from teachers provides specific guidance so students can
improve and progress.

Our teachers are focussed on adaptive teaching practices to ensure our classrooms are fully inclusive to all students. By checking the understanding of all learners in ‘real time’, our teachers constantly assess learning and adapt their lessons to suit the students in the room. This might be through addressing misconceptions, adding or removing scaffolding and giving immediate feedback. This ensures we can both extend the most able students, whilst providing additional support for those needing it.

Literacy skills and oracy are an essential ingredient for success in all subject disciplines. Each subject is developing strategies and resources to support the development of reading, listening, writing and speaking skills in their area. This work is also supported by an explicit focus on widening students’ vocabulary by focusing on the academic and subject specific words relevant to each topic. Further details on our approach to literacy can be found here.

Explicit teaching of metacognition, the understanding of how to learn, has enabled our students to become more reflective learners. Students are encouraged to evaluate the effectiveness of their study skills both in class and in preparation for assessments. This enables them to select the most appropriate approach for future tasks and so develops their self-awareness and self-regulation. Consequently, they gain greater independence in their own learning journey and develop their resilience.

For our able students to fulfil their potential both in examinations and later life, they need to be able to tackle any type of challenge with confidence. Exposure to a broad and varied curriculum, including content beyond the National Curriculum and examination specifications, provides our students with the knowledge, understanding and cultural capital for them to be pro-active and responsible citizens in later life. We also want our students to be curious and show a love of learning so they become lifelong learners.

Find out more about The Crypt Learner here. 

In June 2014, the School’s provision for the More Able, Gifted and Talented  was acknowledged by the successful achievement of the NACE (National Association for Able Children in Education) Challenge Award.  In 2023, we received the NACE Reaccreditation for the second time and have now been invited to be assessed for the highly prestigious Challenge Award Ambassador status.  The rigorous assessment process included close scrutiny of our provision, lesson observations as well as interviews with staff and students.  We were very pleased with our feedback from the assessor which included the following statement:

“Overall, The Crypt School is an exceptional school which has continued to develop its practice and makes very good provision for its more able pupils. It recognises the need to challenge all pupils to achieve the highest levels of performance and this culture of high aspirations pervades every aspect of the school’s work. The whole atmosphere in the school is warm and lively, offering a positive learning environment and it was a pleasure to spend the day in the school.” (Lead Assessment, 2023)