Magnify 

Following on from our staff’s 3 days of professional development around how the brain learns, we are excited to share how this new learning ties in with the elements of Magnify Sandhurst. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be sharing, via our newsletter, a range of information regarding our approach to teaching and learning that is evidence based and supports the individual needs, strengths and goals of our students. 

Whilst our students enjoyed a third week off school over the Easter period, staff were involved in professional learning around the way the brain learns – the neuroscience of learning. These sessions were led by Dr. Jared Cooney-Horvathand for parents who would like to learn more about the neuroscience of learning, Jared has excellent, short videos on his website which can be accessed athttps://www.lmeglobal.net/videos-index. Staff learnt about how information is gathered in our working memory and then how it is transferred and stored in our long-term memory. Our brain works in two modes - ‘Top down’ and ‘Bottom up’.In top-down mode our brain is working hard to learn new information, we must concentrate hard, and this learning can be taxing. We are capable of about 3-4hours of top down learning each day and after that, sleep is what consolidates the new learning and restores those reserves. Bottom-up learning is when we’re on autopilot, when we have experience with what is going on. It is the learning mode where we spend most of our day. Because we know the challenges of learning new information (top-down learning) we understand the importance of creating a learning environment that supports students at these times. Calm, consistent, predictable classrooms alongside explicit, structured teaching lessons eases the ‘cognitive load’ on students, allowing for better success. This is where our low-variance, knowledge rich curriculum delivery comes in. 

Over the coming weeks and months, we will share information about how we teach reading and writing using a Structured Literacy Approach. We will talk about what a low variance, knowledge rich curriculum looks like in our school, and how we are creating and supporting positive learning environments with the development and implementation of our whole school evidence informed Behaviour Curriculum