Our staff deliver high quality, stimulating and dynamic lessons, where your child will be supported and challenged to make excellent progress in their learning. They achieve this by having a passion for their subject, making it interesting and lively and, most importantly, building positive relationships with their students, so that every child can flourish.  

We refuse to stand still in the changing world of education and will take risks in the pursuit of excellence by being brave and radical, challenging the status quo. Your child will learn to become a discerning user of technology, so they take on the world of AI and other disruptive technologies, allowing them to thrive in the modern, dynamic world. Whilst academic outcomes are strong at Freemen’s, creativity, problem solving, independence and teamwork are just as important. We also recognise that making marvellous mistakes and demonstrating resilience is all part of the learning process.  

Teachers at Freemen’s embody our principles for excellent classroom practice, offering innovative, forward thinking approaches, in every lesson, in every subject, every day. This enables us to be a beacon of learning and teaching ensuring that your child is challenged and is able to reach their potential.

 

Six classroom principles for excellent learning and teaching

In order to deliver excellent learning and teaching experiences, we follow the Freemen’s 6. To achieve this, we have created a common language that is easy to interpret for both teaching staff and students – we call these our ‘six principles for excellent classroom practice’. These principles feature in every lesson, every day, in every classroom, irrespective of subject, age or ability range.

  • Challenge: students have high expectations of what they can achieve. Only by giving our students work that makes them struggle can teachers have the highest possible expectations of their capacity to learn.
  • Questioning: students are made to think hard with breadth, depth and accuracy. Questioning is a master art which has a range of purposes: ultimately, we know that students learn when they are thinking.

 

  • Feedback: students further develop their knowledge. Students need to know where they are going and how they are going to get there. We give students feedback to guide them on the right path, and we receive feedback from students to modify our future practice.
  • High expectations: the most reliable driver of high student achievement. Even in students who do not have a history of successful achievement, high expectations have been proven to make a considerable difference to learning in the classroom
  • Creativity: take a risk and try something new. We want teachers to feel safe doing so, try out new strategies and then share and discuss these new approaches openly with others.
  • Student-led learning: keep pupils at the heart of the lesson. Lessons should provide students with the confidence and tools to tackle problems with less dependence on the teacher, through explanation, modelling, feedback, discussion and practice.

 

Read more about learning, teaching and innovation at Freemen's.