Teaching and Learning

At TKAT, we believe that excellent teaching empowers students to make meaningful progress in every lesson, every day, and every year. Consistent progress leads to exceptional outcomes, equipping our students with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to thrive in the next stage of their lives.

The TKAT learning cycle represents an evidence-informed framework for effective teaching, underpinned by a shared, trust-wide language. This common language aligns with the DfE’s Golden Thread, ensuring consistency and coherence in our approach to professional development and classroom practice.

We recognise the holistic view of a school including the fundamental foundations that need to be embedded before effective teaching can take place. The red layers of the teaching pyramid represent these foundations. We further believe that this model enables all teachers to teach and most importantly all students to learn.

You can explore our framework further through our teaching and learning curriculum.

At RSG, good outcomes for students means that they have excelled in their studies and achieved better results than the national average, giving them as much choice as possible for their post-16 and post 18 decisions.

Our Teaching and Learning is charactersised by a 5 step model. Do Now and Connect activities at the start of every lesson support the recall of prior knowledge. Retrieval activities are an important element when introducing new knowledge in order for students to deepen their understanding and make links between the old and new.  Explicit instruction is underpinned by teacher exposition, modelling and regular checks for understanding to ensure all students are making gains in their learning.  Teacher questioning ensures class participation and attention before scaffolding activities that bridge teacher modelling and worked examples, to peer support, before independent work and deliberate practice.  Regular feedback either verbally from the teacher, from peers or written feedback on PATHWAY sheets supports students in consolidation activities and improvements from assessments.

As well as teachers having high expectations, students are aspirational for themselves and invest in their learning beyond the classroom.  We teach effective study habits to promote positive attitudes to learning from the start of Year 7 right through to Year 12 and 13.