The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College believes that:
- Wider Learning reinforces and further develops students’ learning and enables them to make connections between lessons.
- Wider Learning develops the skills, confidence and motivation needed to succeed as an independent learner and to prepare for summative assessments.
- Wider Learning should help inspire students to take their learning beyond the classroom.
Whole School procedures
Wider Learning may take a variety of formats from short tasks to longer, extended work and may address a variety of learning skills.
In order to support teachers to set relevant Wider Learning there is no ‘specific’ day on which it must be set. There is however a guide for staff, students and parents with regards the indicative expectations for the amount set.
Year 7-9
- English/ Maths /Science - Minimum of one Wider Learning per week
- All other subjects - Minimum of one Wider Learning per fortnight
Year 10 & 11
- English/ Maths /Science - Minimum of two Wider Learning tasks per week
- Option subjects - Minimum of one Wider Learning per week
Sixth Form
- Wider Learning should reflect the equivalent number of curriculum hours (eg 4 hrs lessons = 4 hrs Hwk)
Students can typically expect the following amount of Wider Learning:
- Year 7 – 30 minutes – 1 hour per night
- Year 8-9 – 1 hour – 1½ hours per night
- Year 10-11 – 1½ hours – 2 hours per night
- Year 12-13 – 3 hours+ per night
All Wider Learning will be published on Arbor. Arbor is a parent and student portal that provides many features including an onscreen Wider Learning calendar which tracks and monitors set Wider Learning.
For those pupils who do not have access to a computer at home, students will be encouraged to access Arbor on a school computer and print the work assigned, likewise ALL students are encouraged to keep a record of all Wider Learning in their school planner/diary.
Completion of Wider Learning will be checked by teachers, through a range of ‘in-lesson’ strategies including, though not limited by; peer marking, quizzing/knowledge testing, presentations, use of model answers for comparator/self-marking.
Curriculum Leaders supported by Pastoral leaders are responsible for monitoring Wider Learning in accordance with whole school procedures.
Knowledge Organisers
Research around memory suggests that if knowledge is studied once and not revisited or revised, it is not stored in the long-term memory. This means that after one lesson, or revising for one test, the knowledge will not be retained unless it is studied again. It won't be recalled unless it is revisited frequently, which will embed it in the long term memory. In the long term this makes recall far easier.
As part of home learning, students should be revising what they have been taught recently but also content they were taught previously. Therefore as part of our strategy to embed learning over time we have started to develop knowledge organisers across year groups and curriculum areas. These will provide key content and knowledge allowing students to pre-learn and re-learn, a vital part of processing all the information required to be successful in their GCSE's.
Retrieval practice using the look-cover- write-check technique, when done in regular small chunks, is one of the best ways students can learn relevant knowledge over time. Our students will be given a knowledge organiser for every subject. These will show the exact facts, dates, events, characters, concepts and precise definitions that we need them to remember for that topic. Securing this knowledge base will allow students to develop their skills of understanding, analysis and evaluation in lessons more effectively.
Additionally parents can support their son/daughter with this Wider Learning method by practice quizzing key facts, dates and definitions.
