We pride ourselves on using the latest educational research to underpin our teaching and learning approaches. The books below have had a big impact of how we do things here at Weston. 

Our school provides high quality education within a safe and nurturing environment, rooted in Christian belief, values and practice. We ensure our pupils ‘Let their Light Shine’ by teaching them an interdisciplinary curriculum which is rich, broad and balanced. We have sequential curriculum that builds on declarative knowledge and skill as the children move through the school. 

Our inclusive approach means that we can ensure all children are maximising their potential through carefully extending the expectations on them. We use 'desirable difficulty' to ensure that children are always in a state of stretch and challenge, pitched to the children's developmental stage. 

We have implemented a bespoke lesson structure understanding that cognitive load must be considered throughout lesson delivery. We use retrieval strategies in every lesson to activate prior knowledge to ensure that new content is connected to existing knowledge. 

Glossary of terms

Interdisciplinary – combining or involving two or more academic disciplines or fields of study

Retrieval –  learning strategy where we focus on getting information out. It’s even more powerful when combined with additional research-based strategies including spacing , interleaving , and feedback-driven metacognition

Cognitive Load Theory – the used amount of working memory resources. There are three types of cognitive load: intrinsic cognitive load is the effort associated with a specific topic; extraneous cognitive load refers to the way information or tasks are presented to a learner; and germane cognitive load refers to the work put into creating a permanent store of knowledge (a schema).

Declarative knowledge – the accumulation of facts 

Desirable difficulty – trigger encoding and retrieval processes that support learning, and include things such as varying the conditions of learning, interleaving instruction, spaced practice and testing.