At Dale Hall we believe in explicitly teaching our pupils how to manage their learning effectively so that they can become confident, inquisitive and independent learners. We want your children to know how to be successful by teaching them the skills they need to be able to accomplish tasks and experience learning for themselves. We offer this in our own unique Dale Hall way. This is based on extensive research, listening to our children and staff and on the excellent outcomes that we enable our pupils to achieve.
One of the ways we improve the children's attitudes to learning and enable them to manage distractions is to help them understand how and where they learn best. Many children find sitting still in a chair at a desk or on the carpet difficult, we often find children learn better when they are able to choose where they learn. We offer many different places to learn at Dale hall, for example we have workstations dotted around the school, our libraries, middle rooms and corridors where children can take themselves away from the classroom to a quieter space if they choose to.
We also have varied desk heights, stools, chairs, sofas and cushions available in the classroom to enable the children to move more. We do still insist on the same level of concentration, work ethic and outcomes which the children fully understand and uphold. We offer A3 clipboards which enable the children to maintain a high level of presentation but the flexibility to sit in different positions.
We teach pupils the skills they need to be successful learners. Our teachers have been through extensive training to enable them to understand how to teach specific skills to the pupils which in turn will make the learner more aware of the process of learning. The EEF and IOA provided the research and funding for us to take this forward. This year is all about transferring these skills to the children to enable them to understand the ways in which they learn best. They will then use these strategies to improve, extend and embed their knowledge with a much better understanding of the process. Our pupils are now asking metacognitive questions, which are modelled consistently by our teachers and teaching assistants, as well as applying them to different subjects and tasks.
Research based on the above: