Teaching and learning is central to our work at Astrea Academy Woodfields and helps us fulfill our three core values: scholarship, curiosity and tenacity. We call our teaching and learning methods here “The Woodfields Way”.
At Astrea Academy Woodfields, we are ambitious for our curriculum to be academically rigorous, carefully constructed by subject specialists and sequenced in a way that ensures systematic teaching and mastery. It should introduce scholars to powerful knowledge that takes them beyond their everyday experiences and places them in a strong position to lead successful lives beyond school, to question and debate the world around them, making them intellectually curious and preparing them for citizenship in a democratic society.
We do not narrow the curriculum for any pupil. Instead, we ensure that all students receive their entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum, including a generous allocation of Art, Drama and Music as distinct specialisms at Key Stage 3. We work to ensure that our curriculum is coherent and builds learning over time. We ensure that our students have embedded opportunities to connect current learning to both past and future, which enables our students to build this core knowledge at Key Stage 3, with the opportunity to specialise at Key Stage 4.
Within our curriculum, we ensure that we develop literacy, communication and numeracy skills. We use Apollo (Tutor Time) and curriculum development to prioritise high quality reading for all scholars. Scholars are introduced to high quality texts, which they engage with in the best way according to research. All schemes of work throughout the academy take into account challenging reading texts and the development of student vocabulary through a Reciprocal Reading Approach. Scholars are given feedback as a whole class, with individual pointers as to where they have made errors that need correcting by the student.