Teaching & Learning

Harris Academy Chafford Hundred provides an exciting, personalised learning curriculum, which supports and challenges all of our students and is at the heart of our teaching and learning philosophy. We ensure that all teaching and support staff have access to the highest quality training programmes to provide the most innovative and cutting edge learning opportunities for every student.

Please see our Curriculum page for details of the Curriculum and our Subjects page for details of subjects taught.

The Academy aims to:

• Meet the needs and aspirations of all students
• Ensure all students can successfully access the curriculum offer, making any reasonable adjustments required where particular needs are identified
• Recognise high achieving students and ensure they are given opportunities to stretch and challenge their learning
• Plan opportunities for students to develop their personal potential
• Establish an agreed range of policies and practices to guarantee a consistent approach towards learning and teaching in every classroom.
• Involve all staff in developing and improving the quality of learning and teaching
• Provide all staff with developmental opportunities to extend and enhance their range of teaching and repertoires
• Develop staff to deliver skills beyond their own subject specialism and incorporate cross curricular initiatives, in particular Literacy, Numeracy, ICT and Enterprise
• Identify students’ achievements and areas for improvement, through rigorous monitoring of progress and to plan appropriate interventions to enhance learning
• Realise the entitlements for Learners, Teachers and Curriculum as promoted by the Student Learning Commission.

At Harris Academy Chafford Hundred we recognise the core purpose of schools is learning and teaching.  As a staff we believe that student achievement is the result of the quality of teaching and learning. We understand that student achievement and the length of time students stay in education affects their life chances and in particular the longer students stay in education the higher their lifetime salary, the better their health and the longer they live. Improving the quality of teaching and learning is at the heart of everything that we do.

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Chafford 10

Expectations of lessons at the Academy have been developed by teaching staff and are outlined as our Chafford 10. These expectations form the basis of lesson planning and evaluation and are the cornerstone of learning and teaching at the Academy.

1. Active engagement. Students are focused on their learning and are displaying qualities such as curiosity, questioning, applying.

2. Clear on purpose. Students are clear about what they are doing, why they are doing it and how it fits in with what they have learned and are to learn.

3. Informed by data and evidence. Students know how they are performing, where their strengths and weaknesses lie and the requirements of the course / specification.

4. Challenge though learning tension. Students are challenged to think because the work is hard enough to stretch them but there is a clear chance of success. 

5. Reflect, question and evaluate. Students should have the opportunity to display the skills of reflection, evaluation and questioning both about what they are learning and how they are learning it.

6. Collaborate. Learning is socially constructed and is most powerful when students are working with each other and the member of staff in partnership.

7. Build independence and ownership of own learning and progress. Students are able to manage their own learning, they use the member of staff as opposed to rely on them, they display the relevant aspects of the 5R’s and know what to do when they don’t know what to do.

8. Enthusiasm and personalisation. Students display in enthusiasm for and in their learning and the experience they have allows them to make progress and develop as an individual.

9. Demonstrating understanding and progress. Students are given the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learnt and the progress they are making in the lesson.

10. Effective processing of information. Students can analyse, apply and synthesise information from a range of sources.

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The suite of policies below provide further details on how the academy supports the aims outlined above.