Header

Believe

Achieve

Succeed

Teaching & Learning

The Kassia Academy is specialist learning environment for students with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND). We cater for students with a broad ability range and most of our students achieve GCSE level qualifications by the end of Key Stage 4.  At Kassia our approach draws together our whole school approaches to curriculum, assessment, teaching and learning. We aim to provide a high quality of education to our students and to ensure that they achieve their best possible outcomes.

Intent (Why and What)

Our teaching and learning is designed to be creative, inspiring and memorable to provide our children with opportunities where doors are opened to them for the future with the hope that they will learn to find a love of school.   Due to the difficulties that many of our students face, we include Alternative Provision (AP) opportunities throughout the year to ensure that our children have positive life experiences alongside the curriculum.

Implementation (How and When)

We aim to provide a full reading diet for all pupils in a literacy rich curriculum. Pupils regularly read 1:1 and access guided reading each week. Pupils are then exposed to age appropriate texts through the teaching of English lessons. We feel that this in turn enhances pupils writing skills by providing a context for writing, which is something that our pupils struggle with.  Maths is taught following the mixed age curriculum as adopted from the White Rose scheme of learning.  Our approach to the Foundation Subjects is cross curricular and we seek opportunities to make authentic links with the core subjects whenever possible.

Impact (Measurement of progress against targets)

Pupil’s will increasingly engage in learning, where historically, this is something that they were unable to do in other educational settings. Pupils will work towards core learning objectives from the national curriculum, with end goal of children leaving with a range of qualifications from City and Guilds and NCFE to GCSE’s.

Through teaching and learning we aim to:

  • To ensure a broad, balanced, enriched and ambitious curriculum which is accessible for all students.
  • To hold high expectations for our learners and carefully plan their learning journeys to ensure that they are well prepared for their next stages of education, employment or training.
  • To ensure students are successfully prepared for adulthood.
  • To enable those students, to access qualifications which support their aspirations and planned outcomes.
  • To assess student progress and take action to improve learning outcomes for individual students where difficulties have been identified.
  • To capture evidence of learning and enable regular access to progress information for parents/carers.
  • To ensure students understand and remember key concepts through the application of effective teaching and learning strategies.
  • To monitor the progress students make towards their individual EHCP outcomes throughout the full range of our provision and work closely with parents and carers to plan and personalise support.
  • To monitor whether the outcomes for students are improving as a result of the additional provision being made for them.
  • To maintain regular continued professional development opportunities for all staff and ensure that teachers maintain strong subject knowledge for the subjects they teach.

Vision: To give our learners the currency for life

Aspiration: To be the top alternative provision in the country (progress and attainment)

Priorities:

  • High quality feedback, assessment and systems.
  • Data rich tracking systems with support and intervention.
  • Principles of direct instruction, metacognition and blooms taxonomy.

Evidence for Learning (E4L)

Evidence for Learning (E4L)
Links & Downloads

At Kassia we utilise all ways of recording learning opportunities and identify that sometimes these can be difficult to capture in more formal methods. With the Rochford Review in mind we looked at ways in, which we could capture as many learning celebrations as possible with our learners.

We now use Evidence for Learning, which supports an inquiry based approach that allows all stakeholders to capture learning opportunities in traditional learning environments with specific skills/learning or in alternative settings/scenarios where recording an event or achievement with-out traditional recording medians would be impossible.

The software is used on I-Pads and it can be set-up with government frameworks or tailored to meet our specific needs e.g. construction and animal care through our Alternative Provision. The E4L is a useful tool with its ease of access to record evidence on individual plans e.g. Educational Health Care Plan’s (EHCP’s).

IRIS Education

IRIS Education
Links & Downloads

IRIS Education helps good schools become great. The Kassia Academy use technology to connect people with performance, creating intelligent insights to help educators make better decisions and deliver smarter outcomes for pupils. In a PRU setting every day is a journey, which can veer in many directions due to the many challenges and barriers our learners face on a day to day basis. A visitor/guest may access our provision on an unsettled day or day when most of our key stage 4 children are accessing our AP (Alternative Provision) and this will probably give a skewed image of the fantastic work the children are creating.

IRIS allows us to showcase in two ways:

  1. Teachers to record their own observations and reflect on their performance to tailor and enhance future delivery. To use these lessons to support evidence of the great lessons and learning taking place if the school is visited when there is a small cohort.
  2. It allows preference for a teacher to choose the best observation median to fully showcase their teaching skills and further refine through reflection.

Workbooks

Workbooks

At Kassia we focus on maintaining high pride in the quality of our books from all aspects, especially showing the appreciation from staff towards children with their work collated in books. We understand how certain components of a book demonstrate and celebrate the learning journey the pupil is on e.g.

  • Pupils are building on previous lessons;
  • They have a breadth of knowledge;
  • They are making progress;
  • They have opportunities to practice what they have learned.


Previous books will be kept as evidence of progress in understanding, progression and quality. Books are kept in school to ensure that evidence of learning is not lost. Books are set-up in a certain way to support the learner with title pages, knowledge organisers and vocabulary lists linked to the topic. The books and learners are supported through the SMART targets which allow specific focus on what the learning intention is.