Teaching and Learning

The Typical Boswells Lesson

At the Boswells School we believe that outstanding teaching and learning should take place in every lesson. Our teaching and learning strategy is underpinned by a coherent and aspirational curriculum for the school and each subject. We are proud of our teaching and learning strategy and the high quality learning that takes place at the Boswells School.

We ensure that there is an experience of a Typical Boswells Lesson. This means that there is an element of consistency, and yet enough room for creativity and variation, in lessons across all curriculum areas.

Every lesson starts with a Do It Now Task, and is followed with some form of feedback based on the Do It Now Task. Lessons will also include:

• Achievement Points / Boswell Bridges
• Feedback and/or Feedforward
• Challenge through Teaching to the Top
• Clear objective or intention of the learning

What is the Boswells School Teaching and Learning Strategy?

Our teaching and learning strategy is underpinned by pedagogy and teaching research that points towards the best techniques and strategies for learning. The ACED Framework provides teachers with the guiding principles. The ACED Framework is for every key stage and every subject at the Boswells School. The strategy, combined with our strong curriculum, does enable lessons at the Boswells School to be high quality and impactful on learners. The strategy is firmly rooted in scientific and academic research and enables us to have a strong teaching and learning pedagogy for the Boswells School.

What is the ACED Framework? How does it support high quality Teaching and Learning?

The ACED Framework is an approach to teaching and learning that has four key aspects for every lesson. These four key aspects are Assessment, Creativity, Engagement and Differentiation. These four key aspects have a great deal of research and science behind them. They are proven to be driving factors for a strong teaching and learning experience for students. The framework focuses lessons onto these key aspects to ensure that our learners have the ability to be aspirational, motivated and engaged in their lessons. We ensure that every lessons begins with a Do It Now task, and that assessment is interleaved and spaced. Through continual professional development, teaching and support staff are engaging with academic research and strategies to develop their own practice. The infographic below illustrates a summary of each of the key strands of the ACED Framework and some examples that may be seen in lessons.

How does the Boswells School support challenge in the classroom?

Furthermore, we also have a constant focus on how we can improve our pedagogy to support each and every learner to reach above and beyond their full potential.  This is known as Teaching to the Top. This theory firmly fits within the ACED teaching and learning framework and supports every learner. The idea behind Teaching to the Top is the belief that we should not set an artificial ceiling for learners, and through high quality teaching and learning, every learner should aspire to challenge themselves and be proud of their work.  As a school, we have developed a range of Teaching to the top strategies and high quality questioning, to ensure that learners are challenged and that teachers, do indeed, offer challenge for every learner. This might include students being asked to engage with high level reading material and then reduce it down to a specific number of words, or alternatively transform images and text into a different format. Lessons may require students to prioritise and categorise, and then justify their reasoning using precise terminology and detailed language.  The diagram below illustrates the simple pedagogy behind Teaching to the Top and enabling all learners to aspire and achieve.

High quality teaching and learning is at the heart of what we do at the Boswells School.  We are constantly striving to improve our pedagogy through relevant research, academic reading and sharing of ideas. We have a strong quality assurance process to ensure we are evaluating and developing what we do.  We have a strong ethos and culture of professional development, with experienced and driven teachers, that has enabled our lessons to be high quality and learning to be strong.

Image credits:

Lifting the Lid – Tom Sherrington @ https://teacherhead.com/2017/05/28/teaching-to-the-top-attitudes-and-strategies-for-delivering-real-challenge/