Teaching and Learning at Co-op Academy Leeds

This academic year we have 2 key focus areas within our teaching:

1. Challenge for All 

We all care deeply about the community that we serve and want the best for our students. Education can elevate our young people and improve their life chances by opening doors to them in the future. They have an entitlement to study an ambitious curriculum and our role is to support them to access this and thus benefit from the social and economic advantages  a rich educational experience provides. Every student has access to meaningful, challenging learning in every lesson across the academy so that they can achieve their absolute best. We teach to the top with everyone aiming for the same high level – we have high expectations of all of our students. Some students will find these harder to reach, and for those students we scaffold and support them to enable them to meet these high expectations, adapting our teaching in a responsive way to meet the needs of all of our students.
 

2. Literacy Across the Curriculum

Literacy is pivotal to every subject within the school environment and the means of communication academically, socially and emotionally. All teaching staff are responsible for literacy development whichever subject they teach. We recognise that literacy is both general and specific and that a disciplinary approach is the most valuable. We intend for our students to be able to read, write and communicate effectively in all their subjects and, to that end, we explicitly teach a sophisticated range of vocabulary, use an academic reading strategy to open doors to understanding.

We focus on spelling, punctuation and grammar in every subject  using a green highlighter to signal errors and provide bespoke interventions to support corrections. We are striving to become a school where reading is advocated in every subject, is celebrated and is independent.  Additionally, we promote wider reading around subject topics and actively encourage reading for pleasure as well as progress, through our Accelerated Reader program. Moreover, we promote articulacy in our Quality Oracy strategy, developing students’ confidence in a variety of speaking situations which will prepare them to compete in life beyond education. 
 

Co-op Academy Leeds Teaching Principals

Our Teaching Principles set out what great teaching looks like here at Co-op Academy Leeds. They are a set of evidence informed fundamental elements of teaching that form the foundations of how our ambitious curriculum is implemented.

1. Teachers begin each lesson with retrieval practice.
2. Learning intentions and success criteria are shared with students.
3. Expert questioning is used throughout the lesson.
4. New content is delivered via explicit instruction using well sequenced, clear and concise explanations.
5. Guided practice and faded scaffolding are used to ensure all students can access our ambitious curriculum and meet our high expectations.
6. Literacy is explicitly developed, including: vocabulary instruction, reading skills, written accuracy and oracy.
7. Feedback is regularly provided which moves student’s learning on and deepens understanding.
8. Teaching is responsive with frequent formative assessment points during lessons allowing teachers to adapt and modify their approach to meet the needs of the students in their lessons.
9. ‘Quality Time’ is used to provide students with an opportunity for independent practice.
    

The Qualities

The Co-op Academy Leeds’ Qualities are intrinsic to our quest to create an outstanding climate for learning for our students so that they are in a position to maximise their learning potential. They provide a common, consistent language for learning and signal specific expectations of students.

	Quality Audience  This means we expect silence while we take the register, give an instruction or convey information. We expect our students to actively listen the whole time a teacher or another student is speaking.
	Quality Time  This is the signal for students to work independently, usually in silence, as the deliberate practice part of the lesson or lesson sequence. We have built up to this with teacher input, modelling, assessment for learning and scaffolded practise. Students are in the “struggle zone” and so develop resilience, demonstrate grit and improve their knowledge and skills.
	Quality English  This is our signal for students to improve what they have written or said. It is our version of “standard English” which is all of our responsibility. It can mean:  * Upscale your vocabulary * Use the correct grammar * Develop your response into at least 50% formality using:  * “and, but, so, because, therefore” * “In my opinion” * “I would like to build on that by adding …” * “With respect, I disagree and I think …”
	Quality Reading  Every single subject requires students to read. They read powerpoint slides, task instructions, printed resources, text books, worksheets, exam questions, reading books. We use dual coding for access to meaning, offer synonyms, explore the etymology of subject specific vocabulary, add line numbers and use student friendly fonts.
	Quality Oracy  This is additional to Quality English but complements it. These are “Talk Opportunities” within lessons. Lessons involve think/pair/share, group tasks and other collaborative learning activities that involve students speaking which are carefully planned to have striking impact on learning.