As the person who oversees teaching and learning at Myton, I get to work with teachers, support staff and our student community to ensure our students become brilliant learners. I’m incredibly privileged to work with such a committed team of teachers and great students. We want our youngsters be successful academically of course, but we also want them to continue being curious and interested in the world, long after they’ve left us.
Our school community is fully comprehensive and, as a large school, we have students with a vast range of learning needs. Our aim is to ensure staff at the school understand these needs and are skilled at meeting them in the classroom. We do this through high expectations, sound routines and regular feedback. We are continually researching and developing best strategies for classroom practice through training, networking and partnership work with other schools. We encourage our staff to have their classroom doors open so that we can learn from each other, and also to allow students to see that we work as a team.
How can you help?
As your child progresses through school, the support they need will change. However, in general, there are a few simple things you can do to ensure they get the most from school and maintain a disposition to learn.
Encourage curiosity – Talk about issues, ideas and things that are happening locally, nationally and internationally. Good learners ask questions and continue to do so beyond formal education.
Support home learning – If possible, have a place where your child can keep all their books and stationery organised and where they can comfortably work. Check their planner to see that they have completed their homework.
Promote reading at home – Read yourself and show an interest in the books your child is reading. Don’t think you have to stop reading with them just because they are older. Young people love being read to… I have seen tears in the eyes of a strapping, ‘tough’, 16-year-old boy as he listened to the end of the novel Of Mice and Men in a lesson!
Take an interest in your child’s exercise books and work. Challenge inconsistent presentation and incomplete work and ask about the comments made by teachers and their responses. You’ll notice that we insist that students address mistakes or gaps in learning through the use of reflection time in lessons. Students use a purple pen in their books to do this.
Praise the effort your child seems to be putting in and celebrate what we learn from sometimes getting things wrong.
Support their developing organisational skills, especially in Year 7 but also as your child moves through the key stages.
Finally, I fully recognize the effort (sometimes toil!) that goes on ‘behind the scenes’ at home in supporting our students’ learning and want to end this message by saying thank you. We really do appreciate it.
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