Teaching & Learning: The Elthorne Way

At Elthorne Park High School, we have codified the approaches to teaching and learning that are effective in our setting in ‘The Elthorne Way for Teaching and Learning.’ This evidence-informed document sets out key principles for effective teaching which can be broken down into eight threads: 

• Routines and behaviour for learning

• Memory and recall

• Checking for understanding

• Ratio

• Adaptive teaching

• Communication 

• Planning and sequencing of key knowledge 

• Home learning

These form the basis for planning documents shared with staff in their planners, appraisal lesson observation documents and our framework for peer observations and the conversations that follow. Each year, we select the most appropriate thread as our Golden Thread for staff’s continuing professional development and make it the focus of training, reading and appraisal conversations. All members of teaching staff in the school then investigate an aspect of this in the classroom, applying an element of research to their practice and tracking the results, presenting their findings at the end of the year through Elthorne Innovates.

We recognise that learning looks different in each subject area and for each student so the use of our eight threads as guiding principles for effective teaching can be flexibly applied. For example, building participation ratio in a Science lesson might come through a practical activity, whereas in English it could be present through a section of cold-call questioning, pair work or group discussion. We believe that teachers and departments should retain autonomy to select the most appropriate strategy within each unit of work and individual lesson to best fit their aims, their students and their own style of teaching. Our eight threads provide a checklist of principles to apply in the classroom and a range of evidence-informed strategies that teachers can select from in order to ensure that they are applying these in the most efficient way to meet their aims.    

The Elthorne Way for Teaching and Learning was developed by engaging with a range of educational research in order to identify guidelines for effective teaching and learning. Central to this is the Ofsted Education Inspection Framework which builds on relevant research to outline the most effective methods of teaching. Our professional development programme, Elthorne Innovates, is another key way that we use research to update and develop the Elthorne Way for Teaching and Learning. Through identifying a yearly focus on one of the eight threads, and receiving expert input from speakers such as David Didau and Matt Bromley, we are constantly refining our practice through engaging with the most up to date research. In trialling a new approach or technique in the classroom teachers are also actively involved in conducting their own research before sharing and evaluating their findings with colleagues from other curriculum areas as well as their own.

Elthorne Innovates Example