Providing fabulous feedback to students remains a top priority for teachers and learning assistants at Bushey Meads School. Research shows that, when students are shown the clear next steps to take in their learning and are provided with opportunities to address misconceptions and re-draft work, they can make up to three months additional progress every year. This accelerated progress then enables them to exceed their target grades and achieve more highly in the future.

Head of Faculty for Science Ms Booth demonstrated some excellent strategies she uses in her lessons to enable this to happen in a Monday Magic Moment in Staff Briefing in the Main Hall last week. She highlighted her use of learning checklists, based on the clear success criteria outlined in the examination specifications that guide students to success.

For each aspect of the course she provides personalised questions for students to use to benchmark their understanding and identify areas for improvement. Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time (DIRT) is given in lessons for students to then use their purple pens of progress to redraft any highlighted areas for improvement.

This highly targetted and analytical approach is seeing great success, especially at Key Stage 4 and 5 in our school, where science results in all areas have significantly improved over recent years under Ms Booth’s outstanding leadership .