About Us
We’re very proud of our learning culture at St. Theresa’s where everyone – children and adults – move along their learning journey! The only way you can move along is to make a real effort and the way we do that is by challenging ourselves. We’re all about CHALLENGE. All the staff and children challenge themselves and each other. We’re not going to settle for expected – we want to exceed in everything we do.
We don’t believe in work – we believe in learning! At St Theresa’s you’ll hear us talking about our learning and our home learning.
It’s all about our “Growth Mindset” and having a go! Just like “Have a go Mo!”
Every child is encouraged to have a go, try something new, and try hard to succeed. We believe if you put the effort in, you’re moving forward. We’re doing this through mild, spicy and hot activities. The children choose the level of activity they want to carry out. This is monitored very carefully by the class teacher and teaching assistant. At the end of the activity the children are rewarded for effort, for producing something they have never achieved before and more importantly they’re praised for challenging themselves. There’s no room for “Fixed Mindset Freds” here.
Talk Partners is another element of our learning culture. We want everyone to talk about their learning. Each week children are given a talk partner. In every lesson they will talk about what they are learning and will make decisions together. At the end of the week the children will evaluate how effective they and their partner were. Were they good listeners? Did they focus on the task? Did they move on in their learning journey? They will then decide on what they can improve on for the next talk partner.
Assessment for learning is a non negotiable in our lessons at St. Theresa’s. We want to make sure the children understand what they are learning so they can make better than expected progress. We determine this in a number of ways. There’s no hands up in our school. We pull out lolly sticks with the children’s name on and ask them a question. This keeps every child focussed as they don’t know who’s going to be called out next. At the same time if a child finds it difficult to answer the question they can discuss their answer with their talk partners first. This ensures everyone is included regardless of ability.
We use individual whiteboards in all the classes so that children can show their understanding all at once. A feature of our lessons is the use of a visualizer. Every class has one so the teacher can show a piece of written learning midway through a lesson to show the class if the child is on the right track or if they need further guidance on how to meet the learning objective. This helps with peer assessment skills and is modelled in a way where children are comfortable and unafraid to have a go. We also implement a marking policy which includes green pen questions where the teacher asks the child a question to deepen their understanding. The children answer in purple so it’s clear that a dialogue is taking place in their learning journey.
Our Teaching, Learning and Assessment Policy has been included in our Policy Page for you to help your child at home with their learning.
We’re very proud of all of our children at St. Theresa’s and every member of staff, governor, Friends member and parent is committed to ensuring all our children make better than expected progress in all areas each year.
Please contact the school office if you require any further information or to find out when our parent tours are. The administration staff are more than happy to help!
Thank you,
Miss Costa
Executive Headteacher