Curriculum
The TCA Learning Cycle is designed to ensure all students can access the curriculum, and all students can make progress towards ambitious outcomes, ensuring work is broken down into manageable chunks.
Using evidence-informed strategies, the Learning Cycle has been designed to offer adaptive teaching as a universal approach, following the two-step model as recommended by the Educational Endowment Foundation:
- Universal approaches that are likely to be especially important for pupils with additional needs.
- Adaptations and additional support that might also be needed by some pupils.
By focusing on inclusive teaching across all lessons, the Academy aims to have the greatest impact on pupils who find learning most challenging, offering bespoke adaptations and additional support, while reducing the requirement for these where pupils’ needs can be met effectively through high-quality classroom practice.
The Learning Cycle offers students the following:
- Consistency across all subjects, reducing cognitive load and ensuring that all students experience routine and clarity
- Standard Operating Procedures and strategies that have been embedded to ensure students are learning rather than simply doing, with a range of scaffolding strategies forming part of their daily learning
- A cycle of learning, rather than a lesson template. The Learning Cycle will be evident in classrooms and in students’ books as the structure through which learning is sequenced and developed
For more information, see the document below.