Teaching, Learning, Assessment and Homework

Excellent teaching and learning enables students to reach their full potential. Our teaching and learning model focuses on students having:

• the highest standards in all they do
• expert technique in their subjects, and
• appropriate levels of challenge.

Our approach, centred on Quality First Teaching, ensures that we have the highest ambition for all our students regardless of their starting point or background.

At Callerton Academy we place a strong emphasis on reading and its value in preparing our young people for the future. We want our students to read for pleasure, whilst understanding that we also read to gain knowledge, ideas and inspiration.
In Year 7 and 8, students follow the Accelerated Reader programme which guides students with appropriate texts to read and focuses on providing students with reading material that is appropriate to their reading age and can support them to develop this. Students love the opportunity to engage with a wide range of books and the targeted quizzes both encourage enjoyment for reading, whilst also allowing students, teachers and parents/carers to measure progress. In Year 9, we continue Accelerated Reader with students who may still require some more support, however we have a real emphasis on independent selection of texts to encourage reading for pleasure and positive lifelong reading habits. In Years 7 to 9, all students are expected to read for a minimum of twenty minutes a night as part of their homework.

To further embed reading into school life, we also have a dedicated reading period a week as part of our whole school read. Each year group has a novel they will read over the course of a term; this is used as a springboard to encourage discussion and embed into our whole school through the curriculum and different extracurricular activities. We were delighted to have, for example, Malcolm Duffy visit Callerton Academy to talk about his novel ‘Me Mam. Me Dad. Me’ which all our Year 8 students read in the Spring term. This coupled, with reading lessons in English, mean that there are ample opportunities to read and discuss books.
Aside from reading for pleasure, we also encourage students to experience academic literature through textbooks and other sources in lessons. From Year 9 onwards, a key part of homework requires students to embrace academic reading and embed this into their work. We believe every teacher is a teacher of reading and that every member of staff should share what they have been reading so that our students are able to see it modelled clearly to them.

Assessment is a vital part of the learning process and part of our culture of high expectations that supports the potential of every student at Callerton Academy. It should provide high quality feedback to students enabling them to make rapid and sustained progress, as well as being an effective way to support teachers with their lesson planning so they can target learning opportunities.
At the start of each unit of work, all students are given a learning journey which outlines the skills and knowledge they will develop in the unit of work, key vocabulary they will encounter and the assessment(s) they will need to complete. Teachers refer to the learning journeys throughout the unit of work to support students in being successful, as well as encouraging them to actively engage with and take responsibility for their progress over time. Learning Journeys for each subject can be found in students’ exercise books or are displayed in classrooms for more practical subjects.