Academic Excellence at the Heart of Teaching and Learning

At Copthorne Prep, our teaching team are committed to keeping up to date with educational research and best practice, to ensure your children have the best possible educational experiences, both in and out of the classroom.  

Last week, our focus was on Rosenshine’s principles of instruction, which provide a bridge between research and classroom practice. They link to countless effective teaching strategies which are rooted in cognitive science and are considered ‘best practice’ in education.   

Some of the cognitive science that underpins Rosenshine’s principles of instruction are: 

Retrieval practice
This is asking children to recall information previously learnt, rather than recapping it for them. The process of retrieving learnt information strengthens children’s memory of it, thus enabling it to be stored as long-term, secure memory. Therefore, they improve not only in terms of learning retained, but also in their ability to recall and retain, which strengthens them as learners.

Cognitive load theory
This means avoiding overloading children’s working memory, so that they can focus on assimilating new learning effectively and securing it in long-term memory. This means that we put in scaffolds and support to help children with things that are not the primary learning focus of a lesson, enabling them to really target their attention on new learning.

Growth mindset
This is the belief that skills, abilities and intelligence can be developed. Growth mindset encourages us to embrace cognitive conflict – we teach children that finding something difficult is a positive part of the learning process, and that working through challenge is beneficial for developing long-term resilience.

Keeping these principles and their grounding in research in mind helps us to ensure our lesson design and delivery maximises your children’s learning potential.