Innovative Approaches to Core Subjects
Maintaining and increasing standards and achievement in core subjects is often the main strategy for schools. Through our Innovative Approaches to Core Subjects package, we engage and motivate children with exciting, experiential and responsive processes which result in improved attainment and achievement.
Our methods allow schools to find fresh approaches to the areas of numeracy, literacy and ICT, often by implementing this learning through real scenarios and approaches. Finding methods for exploring and using numbers and words in creative ways can be the answer to engaging and developing the motivation and skills of young people.
What they Say...
“Teaching children to express themselves intelligibly through well-formed speech and to listen attentively so as to understand what is said to them is crucial to their educational success. The entire curriculum should be fully exploited for this purpose because it not only fosters children’s intellectual development and enjoyment of learning but also boosts their self-confidence, social and emotional development and motivation to learn.”
Page 58, Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum
“Lack of opportunities to apply and use mathematics, which leads to children not understanding what to do when faced with real-life mathematical problems even though they know how to ‘do sums’, is a common concern in Ofsted findings.”
Page 68, Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum
How We Do It
Courtlands Special School, Plymouth – Raising Achievement in Maths
Our work with Courtlands used dance and multisensory learning techniques to improve maths achievement, an area identified as a persistent weakness in the schools development plan. Out of the 19 participants in the project 16 have gone up at least two sub levels or full levels since their baseline assessments; moving from P scales to national curriculum level 1 or 2 in both using and applying number, number and shape, space and measure. This is an unprecedented increase in their numeracy skills and it is a dramatically steep increase over the course of two terms in students whose progression had not improved in four to five years.
Otterham Primary School, Cornwall - Literacy
Our work with Otterham introduced a series of methods to make writing an exciting experience, as a method of improving literacy. This was done by bringing in artists, filmmakers, animators and real life experiences to enrich the learning process, giving young people stimulating content to write about. And it wasn’t just the children that felt the difference; by working with the creative practitioners the school’s staff learnt new skills and approaches to engage their pupils with writing in interesting new ways.
Linden Primary School, Gloucester – Sound Walks
The Year 1 cohort of 2008-9 at Linden struggled with their phonics programme, with speaking and listening skills well below the national average. Through our work, 56 children worked with a digital media expert to explore how the use of sound and video recording equipment could develop speaking and listening by drawing on their immediate surroundings as a stimulus for learning. The work clearly impacted the children’s abilities to form sounds and words, and make these clear for an audience or listener.
The Raw Facts
- 84% of pupils at Courtlands Special school has progressed at least 2 sub levels or one full level by using dance and multisensory techniques to explore maths
- “We have been learning about some good words and get the words right... We have found doing the speaking and saying words more fun because of getting to use the sound and film things.” Year 1 children from Linden Primary school on their improvements in speaking and listening through the Sound Walks programme.
- “Overall, the speaking has become clearer in the Year one children, and they have become aware of speaking to an audience who need to understand what they are saying.” Teacher comments from Linden School.
Otterham School - Innovative Approach to Literacy
