Teaching and Learning is rightly given a high priority at Hull Trinity House Academy and a robust CPD programme has been developed over the last few years to ensure that students are given a quality learning experience by all teachers.

The Academy has appointed a Senior Leader who has a specific responsibility for teaching and learning pedagogy to ensure that teachers at the Academy are continually striving to improve their skills as practitioners.

A teaching and learning team of ‘outstanding’ staff, with representatives from across the majority of subjects, support this process and ensure teaching and learning remains a priority within the faculties through sharing good practice.

The key components of every lesson will include a retrieval activity known as The Drill, reference to the learning journey, differentiated learning outcomes, live marking and Demonstrate and Connect activities.

Demonstrate marking provides classroom teachers the opportunity to efficiently assess the progress of pupils and plan lesson sequences to further enrich pupil understanding. During a lesson, pupils will complete a Demonstrate task in silence. The teacher will then highlight the task using a RAG rating. The following lesson, pupils will complete a Connect task to address misconceptions or to further enrich their understanding of lesson content. Pupils should be aware of the Demonstrate and Connect process and the impact it can have on their learning.  

The Demonstrate task is an independent activity at the end of a learning sequence (see below for frequency of tasks). This should involve an exam or specification-based question that allows the class teacher to evaluate the progress achieved in a lesson. This activity should be challenging and assess what pupils have understood in a sequence of learning. The Demonstrate task should be a pre-planned activity that has relevant challenge but is also scaffolded where necessary.  

The Connect task is an activity designed to address misconceptions or mistakes from the previous lesson’s Demonstrate task. This is a planned starter activity that is differentiated according to the RAG outcomes from the previous lesson. Within this, there should be relevant tasks that address common misconceptions as well as stretch and challenge to develop the learning of pupils who have been successful in their Demonstrate activity. 

A rigorous quality assurance system is in place to monitor the day to day practices of teaching staff, supported by subject leaders and senior staff who conduct regular work scrutiny and learning walks on all departments to ensure that standards are typically high.

Senior leaders maintain a high presence within lessons and conduct climate walks to ensure that the teaching, learning and assessment students are receiving in their lessons is up to the required standard. Middle leaders also conduct regular quality assurance checks on their department which helps to produce a clear picture of the standard of teaching and learning.

The continued professional development of all staff is of key importance at the academy. The academy CPD programme enables all teachers to follow a bespoke training programme which ensures skills are developed in the classroom as well as aiding personal career progression.

At Hull Trinity House Academy we pride ourselves on listening to our students through student voice questionnaires and interviews. All aspects of teaching and learning are discussed with all year groups and this enables the school to keep a ‘live’ view of the service we offer. We strongly believe that the quality of provision we offer at the academy must provide the best start to the lives of our students.

Our Assessment and Feedback policy has further strengthened the academy’s procedures and students receive clear and regular feedback on how to improve their work. Progress data is regularly reported back to parents throughout the year.

The academy also offers targeted students the opportunity to improve their reading age by participation in various reading intervention programmes. These interventions see good ground made by the majority of students and continually strive to drive up standards of literacy in the Academy.

We have high expectations for how students should present themselves and their work.  PROUD is the acronym for high quality presentation of written work.  It stands for:

Collaborative Learning

Why do we learn in collaborative classrooms?

In collaborative classrooms learners learn together in teams, sharing experiences and making progress together.

In our collaborative classrooms we believe in: