How we learn

We cannot afford to waste a minute of a child's time at Charlbury. We want to provide every child with the knowledge, skills and experiences to be able to succeed not just at secondary school but beyond.

Every child is unique and every class represents a different set of challenges. With that in mind, our staff use a variety of methods to ensure that our children are prepared for life after primary school by knowing and remembering more of the subjects they study. Our Teaching, Learning, Assessment and Feedback Policy is designed to allow staff to focus on the most effective methods of ensuring long term retention of knowledge, skills and attitudes.

We intend for our curriculum to help instil our three school values of Community, Integrity and Mastery. Furthermore, we want it to cultivate a passion for learning as well as inspire curiosity, confidence and a strong sense of self worth. We expect all of our students to study the full national curriculum and retain a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter.

We believe that feedback is most effective when it happens in the moment. Staff work hard to ensure that any misconceptions are addressed immediately to ensure children have the right foundations for future success.

In the Early Years, we believe that the children we work with benefit from periods of self-directed Learning Through Play.  This is so that they develop the ability to set up and engage in independent thinking as well as the ability to challenge themselves.  For this reason, our Learning Through Play may consist of completely open-ended resources or more structured resources which the children can freely choose to engage in.  There may be times when we provide the children with specific challenges, perhaps due to an individual need or because the class teacher has identified that there is a specific objective that the majority of the class need to meet.

The children will also spend time participating in teacher-led tasks and activities.  As the children move to Year 1 and then Year 2 this amount of teacher-led time will increase in order to enable each class to fully cover the requirements of the National Curriculum.