At Kassia Academy, our approach to teaching and learning is built around a clear, consistent model designed to help every pupil access ambitious learning and make strong progress. Our classrooms focus on creating the right conditions for learning: pupils are supported to feel safe, ready to learn, able to focus and increasingly confident in working independently.
Across the academy, teachers use the Kings Academy Trust Teaching and Learning Approach. Lessons are shaped around six core elements: Secure Attention, Start Strong, Teach Clearly, Practise Together, Practise Independently, and Check and Secure. These are supported throughout by Quality Questioning, High Oracy Standards, Ongoing Assessment and Adaptive Teaching. Together, these help teachers explain new learning clearly, model and practise important knowledge and skills, check understanding and respond quickly when pupils need further support or greater challenge.
Our approach is deliberately inclusive. We adapt how pupils access learning without lowering expectations: changing the route into learning, not the destination. Teachers and teaching assistants use modelling, scaffolding, vocabulary support, questioning and carefully targeted adult support to remove barriers while promoting independence.
We continually review the quality of teaching through professional development, coaching, StepLab practice and quality assurance. This enables us to identify what is working well, strengthen classroom practice and ensure that improvements have a measurable impact on pupils’ learning over time.
At Kassia Academy, teaching assistants play a key role in helping pupils access learning successfully while developing confidence and independence. Our approach is structured around five stages: Prepare, Notice, Support, Fade and Feedback. This ensures that support is purposeful, responsive and closely connected to the learning taking place.
Teaching assistants are expected to understand pupils’ needs and the intended learning, notice barriers and misconceptions, and use strategies such as questioning, modelling, scaffolding and literacy support to help pupils move forward. Support is carefully reduced as pupils become more secure, so that adults provide the smallest useful amount of help and avoid creating dependence.
The aim is always to reduce barriers without lowering ambition, keeping pupils engaged in the same core learning while helping them become increasingly independent and successful learners.
