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Teaching Principles

Our principles of teaching place a renewed emphasis on lesson planning as a craft of thought, a deliberate, reflective process that shapes every aspect of classroom practice.

Planning is no longer seen as a background task, but as a central professional habit that drives clarity, coherence, and precision in teaching. By starting with clear end points and identifying the simplest, most effective path to success, teachers design learning that is purposeful, sequenced, and rooted in subject mastery. This approach ensures that every lesson contributes meaningfully to the wider curriculum journey, with careful attention to prior knowledge, key milestones, and common misconceptions.

We also expand our focus on “making it stick”, recognising that durable learning happens when students are challenged to think hard at the point of teaching, not just during retrieval activities. We have therefore incorporated making it stick more widely into our teaching, and our principles work together to fundamentally make knowledge stick. By actively using misconceptions, non-examples, and high-ratio questioning, we help students process and connect ideas in meaningful ways. These strategies encourage deeper thinking and reflection, so knowledge is not only recalled but understood and retained for the long term.

Great teaching at our school is defined by six interconnected principles. First, we establish a high Quality of Attention through consistent routines, clear expectations, and the cultivation of a scholarly culture where every student is expected to engage fully and think deeply. Second, our approach to Lean Lesson Planning ensures that every lesson is intentional, efficient, and aligned with long-term learning goals. Third, we deliver high-quality instruction that models excellence, reduces cognitive overload, and builds new knowledge on secure foundations.

Fourth, we focus on Making Learning Stick by designing activities that promote active thinking, challenge misconceptions, and support long-term retention. Fifth, we provide Effective Feedback that is timely, specific, and designed to change the learner, not just the work, by identifying gaps and guiding students to close them through meaningful tasks. Finally, we practise Adaptive Teaching, planning with our specific classes in mind and making reasonable adjustments to meet the needs of all learners, including those who are most able, disadvantaged, or have additional needs.

Together, these principles underpin a culture of clarity, challenge, and continual improvement, where teaching is seen as a craft to be honed and learning as a journey to be mastered.

Teaching principles

 

1. Quality of Attention

Behaviour is just another part of teaching that we can all get better at. It is the responsibility of all of us to have the highest expectations of student behaviour in classrooms, for the sake of us and our colleagues. If students aren’t paying full attention, they won’t learn anything. We want students practising perfection, so we need to root out any instances of imperfect behaviour. We will do that by being positive and assertive. Quality of Attention is inclusive of not only high expectations but also creating a scholarly culture that can withstand challenge and pushing students to think hard.

What is it?

  • Having unwaveringly high expectations, in line with academy policy, every lesson every day
    • Active participation is insisted upon, not just compliance. Students’ quality of attention is constantly monitored, and steps are taken to ensure full effort and attention is given at all times.
    • Using consistent routines and slick transitions so that time is not lost, and students can maximise their thinking.
  • Consistent use of the whole school behavior policy: 4 Point Plan
    • Knowing what constitutes a ‘first warning’.
    • Knowing how to manage behaviour after a warning has been issued so as to avoid escalation.
    • Knowing how to deliver the ‘choice’ i.e. “Do you choose to change your behaviour and complete all work without turning round, or choose to leave the classroom?”
    • Knowing what constitutes straight to ‘on-call’.
  • Being positive-assertive in the Academy.
    • “Because I care about you, what I’m asking you to do is not optional”.
    • Assertive = setting ruthlessly high expectations that you ask the students to meet every lesson. “Is that sentence really great?” Boss the classroom.
    • Positive = Genuine warmth, genuine care. “I’m asking you to stop talking because I care about you doing your best”.
    • Whilst maintaining high expectations we manage a tiny minority of students differently within the system.
  • Explain to students why you’re doing what you are
    • “Ben, we don’t do that in the classroom as it keeps us from making the most of our learning time, first warning.”
  • Distinguish between behaviour and person
    • “Your behaviour is inconsiderate” rather than “you’re inconsiderate”.
  • Consequences are temporary, don’t hold grudges
    • Once you’ve given a consequence your next job is to forgive and see the greatness in that kid.
  • Actively creating a scholarly culture
    • Actively promoting and rewarding scholarly culture
    • 100% engagement, an environment that promotes learning tension
    • A willingness to answer questions, a no opt-out culture

 

What is it not?

  • Inconsistent 4 Point Plan usage
    • Missing a stage of the 4PP or giving out multiple warnings in rapid succession.
    • Not giving warnings when they’re deserved for low level disruption.
    • A poor delivery of choice.
  • Unskilful application of the 4 Point Plan
    • Processing a student through a rapid succession of warnings without any efforts to correct student behaviour in between.
  • Warmth in the absence of strictness
    • Lowering your expectations because it is more comfortable for the students.
    • Not holding students to account for meeting your high expectations.
    • Letting things go because you want to ‘keep them in the room’.
  • Strictness in the absence of warmth
    • Anger.
    • Missing the opportunity to correct student behaviour within warnings.
    • Using warnings as a means to get to on-call, not to correct behaviour.

2. Lean Lesson Planning

Planning is not just preparation, it is a habit of thought. We begin with clear end points and map the simplest, most effective path to them. Lessons are designed with subject mastery in mind, building from prior knowledge and anticipating misconceptions. Each micro-step is intentional, ensuring clarity, coherence, and purpose.

What is it?

  • Having Clarity of End Points & Using the Simplest Path
  • Starting with the end in mind
  • What is the end point of the lesson? What will success look like?
  • What do they need to be able to know and do to get there? What are the learning intentions?
  • What will success look like at each of these key milestones?
  • Using Subject Mastery
    • What are the most important things students should know as a result of these lessons?
    • What does this knowledge link to in the past and in the future?
    • The teacher can model an ‘A*/ grade 9 answer’ in this topic, they are clear on what the end point is.
  • Teacher has a comprehensive understanding of how to implement the curriculum.
    • The teacher knows what students are already likely to know about the subject so that teaching can build upon prior knowledge.
    • The teacher knows how to quickly and expertly assess prior knowledge and is aware of key misconceptions.
    • The teacher knows where this lesson sits in a sequence of lessons and what it’s building towards.
    • The teacher can describe the steps needed to construct an ‘A*/ grade 9 answer’.
    • Misconceptions are predicted, planned for and addressed.
    • The teacher plans questions and uses them to make the students think hard about key ideas.
    • The teachers call upon effective stories, examples, models to make the topic come to life.

What is it not?

  • Great Planning is not ‘activity based’ or ‘coverage based’ planning, it is planning that requires excessive clarity, what you want students to be able to do as they progress through the lesson.
  • Good subject knowledge alone is not sufficient to achieve subject mastery
    • Knowing the intent of, and how to implement, the curriculum is just as important as knowing your subject well.
    • I might have a PhD in molecular Biology, but this does not mean I can effectively implement the curriculum for Foundation Science in Yr 10

3. Quality of Instruction

In the “I Do” phase, we model excellence and reduce cognitive overload. Instruction is clear, concise, and connected to prior learning. We use concrete examples to anchor abstract ideas, and we sequence learning to maximise understanding and retention.

What is it?

  • The I Do Phase – do students get it?
  • Identified key milestones and micro-steps, model excellence in them
  • New knowledge is built on prior knowledge and linked to wider schema
  • Abstract knowledge is tied to concrete examples
  • Element interactivity is actively reduced
  • Activity instructions are concise and chunked to avoid overload

Fully guided instruction

An expert is someone that can perform something with accuracy and fluency. We want our students to become experts, and fully guided instruction is the most effective way of moving someone from novice to expert.

I do

  • Teacher confidently delivers a concise, explicit explanation of the new knowledge. Students listen and give high quality attention.
  • Teachers explain new knowledge with reference to prior knowledge to ‘build upon.’
  • Teacher shares the best examples, stories and models to support student understanding.
  • Respect the limits of working memory, chunk the new content into small pieces.

We do

  • Give students the opportunity to do a few with you. “What’s next?” “What else do I need to say?” “What mistake have I made?”
  • Students start to practice on their own, but the armbands are still on. Writing frames, key words, scaffolding is provided here.
  • Formative assessment is used effectively to ascertain whether students are ready for independent practice. Check that every student is ready to move on.

You do

  • Students practice with the armbands off. The teacher is not supporting.
  • Lots of deliberate, independent practice of the new content.

What is it not?

  • Discovery based learning.
    • Student-led learning without existing knowledge. It is an ineffective use of time.
  • Popping the armbands too early.
  • Rushing the ‘I do’ teacher explanation phase without thorough exploration of models, stories etc.
  • Students guessing before they have been explicitly taught the new knowledge.
  • Valuing enthusiasm over precision, challenge and learning.

4. Checking Understanding and Thinking Hard

Learning is a change in long term memory. If something hasn’t changed in long term memory, no learning has occurred. The accumulation of knowledge in long term memory is what empowers our students to perform well in exams and ultimately empowers the school to close the attainment gap.

We know that memory is the residue of thought, the more students have to think, the more knowledge ‘sticks’. We subscribe to a mode of fully guided instruction. As student independence grows, their cognitive load varies, and we must ensure we are consistently reaching that ‘goldilocks’ moment and students are thinking hard in lessons.

We place a particular emphasis on the “We Do” phase, we ensure learning is durable by making students think hard at the point of teaching. We harness misconceptions, use non-examples, and design high-ratio activities that promote metacognition and cognitive challenge. This is more than retrieval, it’s about embedding knowledge through active, effortful thinking.

What is it?

The best teaching is adapted to stretch, and support, all students.

  • Students are made to think hard
    • Memory is the residue of thought. The harder students think, the more they’ll remember.
    • Have you connected new knowledge to secure knowledge in long term memory
    • Have you identified the metacognitive steps and explicitly checked them
    • What are the potential misconceptions, errors or likely element interactivity with this knowledge
    • Have you used non-examples to elicit these misconceptions
    • Have you implemented a high-ratio activity that ensures students think hard about that misconception
  • Deliberate practice to embed knowledge in long term memory
    • Students should have an opportunity to deliberately practice so that students can embed learning into their long-term memory.
    • Practice should increase in difficulty so that students are made to think hard at all times.
  • Regular low stakes testing
    • Following instruction, testing should check student understanding.
    • Lessons should start with 20-30 minutes of high challenge recall to strengthen memory and prevent forgetting happening.
  • Learning is interleaved with high challenge starts to lessons (silent ‘Do Now’s)
    • State/define/give questions that ask for retrieval of key facts / knowledge
    • Key knowledge should be systematically retrieved to prevent forgetting, with no topic left too long before retrieval is required.
    • Topics are interleaved e.g. 2 questions from last lesson, 2 from last week, 2 from last term. Similar, but different, concepts are tested together.
    • Retrieval grids; close the gap with individual / group feedback.

What is it not?

The ‘We Do’ is not simply going through the phases.

  • Students should experience challenge and get things wrong
  • They should be pushed to challenge their misconceptions
  • It should not be a tick list of activities where they ‘get it, and forget it…’

During the silent ‘Do Now’:

  • Asking questions that ask students to guess.
  • Opening a lesson with easy questions e.g. true/false rather than state/define.
  • Challenge coming from the questions or tasks rather than the knowledge base e.g. ‘evaluate…’
  • A question chosen at random with no thought to interleaving.

Following instruction:

  • A lack of deliberate practice
    • Asking 1-2 questions that check understanding, rather than strengthen memory.
  • Easy deliberate practice that doesn’t increase in difficulty

5. Effective feedback

Our approach to feedback seeks to rebalance an aspect of pedagogy which has been dominated by written comments in student books and put a greater emphasis on equally effective but more time-efficient methods.

The sole purpose of feedback is to further students’ learning. Written feedback, because it is easily observable and fits into a model of accountability, is privileged over other forms of feedback. This runs counter to the evidence which makes it clear that instant, verbal feedback during a lesson is often more effective than receiving formative comments days after you really need to enact them. We expect feedback to be regular, specific, timely, acted upon, and to address literacy. 

What is it?

  • Through a lesson, we need to assess what students are thinking at key milestones:
    • Identify hinge points and prepare questions which are plausible, focus on 1 misconception and are succinct
    • Design an activity that obtains information legibly, promptly, respectfully
    • Prepare follow up that maintains thinking, elicits reasoning or helps bridge gaps
    • This is always a high-ratio activity
  • Through a lesson, we need to assess what students are thinking at key milestones, and then what they can do as a result of that lesson
    • Use an endpoint that enables you to make useful and valid inferences, differentiates and elicits misconceptions
    • Balance, have you considered the depth/importance of knowledge against time taken to check it
    • Have you considered the metacognitive steps for where it could go wrong
  • Timely feedback to maximise learning
    • So that students can respond and improve rapidly and avoid practising with incorrect knowledge/technique.
  • Comments are specific, accurate and clear
    • So students know what to do to improve.
    • So that student work attains a high standard.
    • So that students’ work is literate and presentable.
  • Time to respond to feedback
    • So that students can evidence that they have closed the gap and remember what they’ve learned by practising it.
  • When appropriate, and worth the opportunity cost, review feedback is offered
    • Review Feedback, subsequent to the point of teaching e.g. written comments on essays.
    • Effective, but only when you can justify the time.

What is it not?

  • Review feedback provided 2-3 weeks after first teaching
    • In the majority of cases this will not be very useful. Typically, immediate or summary feedback would be better.
  • A failure to look at student work regularly
    • Teachers need to check what exactly students can do independently in a thorough and robust manner. We don’t assume that they can do it just from what we saw in lesson. We check more thoroughly.

6. Adapting Teaching

Adaptive teaching is the process of adapting instruction so that all students can access and learn the most challenging content.  We know that memory is the residue of thought, the more students have to think, the more knowledge ‘sticks’. Adaptive teaching is the process of getting all students to learn the curriculum. 

What is it?

The best teaching is adapted to stretch, and support, all students.

  • Pitch high
    • Model the new thing brilliantly, and pitch high, above the smartest student in the class. Your curriculum knowledge makes it look easy.
    • Check regularly that your lower attaining students are understanding. Make sure the highest attaining students are actively thinking.
  • Support
    • Arm bands on
    • Deconstruct the process into small steps. “What should I do next…?”
    • Plenty of shared examples, with each shared example more students will be able to start independent practice. You may stay here for a while, that’s fine.
    • Show them non-examples (‘What it’s not’), it’s the difference between what it is and what it isn’t that helps students to define their new learning clearly and correctly in their minds.
  • Independent deliberate practice (“You do”)
    • Arm bands are popped, no / minimal support from teacher.
    • Everyone doing the same, difficult thing, rather than different levels of task.
    • You may not get to independent practice in every lesson, that’s ok.
  • Know your class and how you are adapting to their needs. What are reasonable adjustments you can make?
  • Tactical Seating plan
  • Targeted questioning
  • Targeted circulation
  • Targeted intervention
  • Know your student needs: Most Able, PP, SEN, EAL and build systems to support.

 

What is it not?

  • Differentiation by outcome (all/most/some)
    • The expectation that ‘some of you won’t get this’ i.e. all/most/some is not something we subscribe to as it is founded upon a mistaken belief that ability is fixed.
  • Differentiation by task, where ‘support’ comes from different levels of task, as a routine.
    • ‘Support’ coming from different levels of task does work, and necessary for EAL or for particular SEN needs, but is incredibly time consuming and there is a better way.
  • Writing frames that stay there.
    • This is not preparing students for the rigours of exams and gives a false positive about what students actually can do.
  • Teacher 1-to-1 support as the main technique for adapting teaching.
    • 1-on-1 teacher support for 30 kids is simply impractical