Teaching and Learning – The Theale Green Way
High quality teaching and learning is the Theale Green way. Our teaching and learning strategy is underpinned by a coherent and aspirational curriculum for the school and each subject. We are proud of our strategy and the high quality teaching and learning that takes place at Theale Green School.
What is Theale Green School’s Teaching and Learning Strategy?
Our teaching and learning strategy is based on the guiding principles outlined in The MARGE Strategy. The strategy is for every key stage and every subject at Theale Green School. This strategy, combined with our strong and aspirational curriculum, does enable lessons at Theale Green School to be high quality and impactful on learners. The strategy is firmly rooted in scientific and academic research and enables us to have a strong teaching and learning pedagogy for Theale Green School.
What is the MARGE Strategy? How does it support high quality Teaching and Learning?
The MARGE strategy is presented and researched by Professor Arthur Shimamura. It is founded in cognitive science and gives a foundation for lessons that ensure progress and challenge. The strategy focuses lessons on the whole brain and means that Theale Green lessons motivate learners, help learners attend to their knowledge and understand their learning and its importance, generate their own ideas through thinking hard and understand their learning through evaluation. We also ensure that lessons have engaging and thought provoking Do It Now tasks, and that assessment is interleaved and spaced. Through continual professional development, teaching and support staff, are engaging with the academic research and continue to develop strategies to support high quality MARGE lessons. Staff are proud of the professional development that they undertake and embed into their lessons. As part of this professional development, teaching staff are exploring and developing their practice by engaging in the Rosenshine Principles of Instruction. These principles support our teaching and learning strategy and help provide the tools and scaffolding for strong teaching and learning at Theale Green School.
We support challenge in the classroom, through our Thinking Hard and Lifting the Lid strategies, and this ensure that our more able learners are stretched and supported to reach their high aspirations and expectations. To find out more about how challenge works within the classroom, and for some specific examples from our languages department,
please watch the following Parent Workshop on Challenge.
We are constantly transforming the lives of our students and this is well evidenced in the destinations that our young people go onto – click here for more about their destinations. We are proud of the work and outcomes that our students achieve.
High quality teaching and learning is at the heart of what we do at Theale Green School. We are constantly striving to improve our pedagogy through relevant research, academic reading and sharing of ideas. We have a strong ethos and culture of professional development, with experienced and driven teachers, that has enabled our lessons to be high quality and learning to be strong; and this is the Theale Green Way.
For access to Arthur Shimamura’s research on MARGE, please visit:
https://shimamurapubs.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/marge_shimamura.pdf
For a more detailed understanding of the Rosenshine Principles of Instruction, please visit:
https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Rosenshine.pdf
Image credits:
1: TGS Strategy – Slidesgo @ https://slidesgo.com/ and Freepik @ https://www.freepik.com/
2: MARGE – Arthur Shimamura @ https://shimamurapubs.wordpress.com/marge-a-whole-brain-learning-approach-for-students-and-teachers/
3: Lifting the Lid – Tom Sherrington @ https://teacherhead.com/2017/05/28/teaching-to-the-top-attitudes-and-strategies-for-delivering-real-challenge/
Exam Results 2022
In 2022 our GCSE students achieved some fantastic exam results, befitting this extraordinary year group. The results demonstrate the significant improvements Theale Green School has made over reEcent years and place us in the top 20% of the country.
Estimated Progress 8 score of +0.15 (National 0)
53% of all students achieved a grade 5 and above in English and Maths
77% of all students achieved a grade 4 and above in English and Maths
The average grade in half of the GCSE qualifications was a grade 6
Charlotte Badarello, Head of School, who has overseen significant change in the curriculum over the last two years, said:
“We are so excited to now welcome this year group into our sixth form. They have been role model students throughout the last two years, and they have been nothing but a pleasure for all of us to work with. We are immeasurably proud of their incredible success, which has come through hard work and a hugely positive attitude. Many congratulations to them all.”
Post 16
Theale Green School’s Sixth Form has been ranked in the top 1% in the country for performance at post 16 for the last three years. There are no progress tables for 2022, however this year students’ hard work has again paid off to enable outstanding destinations.
Post 16 destinations
Post 16 students went on to secure places on prestigious apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships, and also gained places on sought-after courses at universities including University of Oxford, Newcastle, Cardiff, Birmingham, Kings College and Southampton.University.
Executive Principal of Theale Green School, Jo Halliday, said:
“At Theale Green School we are really proud of the accomplishments of our year 13 students. This is a year group who had an interrupted course of learning that no other 18-year-olds have ever experienced before. We have been full of pride in how they have remained focused through adversity, working closely with their teachers to go on and achieve outstanding results.”
