Class Teacher - Year 5/6

To join the MILL Academy Trust is to join a family – staff and pupils who want to do things differently. 

Here we think deeply about how we can have the biggest impact on pupils. In a world where the algorithms of life give us more of the same, we believe education has the role to give children something different. We continually ask ourselves the following five questions;

• Are we securing equity? 

• Is our leadership driving school improvement? 

• Is our curriculum irresistible?

• Are we research informed?

• Are we deploying resources effectively?

At Queen Emma’s Primary School, we have a culture of compassion where we have high expectations and show understanding. We have 3 rules; ready, respectful and safe. We are a truly inclusive school and passionately believe that every child has a right to mainstream education. We aim to ensure that all our children have access to a ‘box set’ knowledge curriculum that builds children schemata. We plan sequences of learning that incorporates high challenge, low threat quizzes to provide retrieval practice and the hypercorrection effect for our children, and assessment for learning opportunities for the adults. We replaced our marking policy with feedback- feedback must be a medical, not a Post Mortem. We work on the understanding that the best type of feed back is in the moment and/or in the next lesson – we teach the gaps. 

As a Read Write Inc school, we group children by their gaps. These groups are fluid and flexible to allow children to make rapid progress to catch up and keep up with their peers. We limit our interventions to the ones that are evidence based and enable our children to access the curriculum. We use the Cornerstones Curriculum which is topic based, but ensure we keep the integrity of the subjects. Our curriculum is learnt, not experienced. We don’t teach to the test as we believe great SATs results are a by product of giving children knowledge. We explicitly teach tier 2 and 3 words, foster structured reading opportunities, promote and scaffold high quality academic talk in the classroom, promote and scaffold high quality academic writing and foster ‘word consciousness’ and independent word learning strategies.

We have identified our intentions for our curriculum. We aim to make sure our curriculum; 

• is ambitious and designed to give all learners, particularly the most disadvantaged, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.
• extends beyond the academic by providing opportunities to develop and discover their interests and talents. Learners are supported to develop their character and help them to know how to keep physically and mentally healthy – including resilience, confidence and independence.
• prepares learners for life in modern Britain, equipping them to be responsible, respectful, active citizens who contribute positively to society; developing their understanding of fundamental British values. All learners will develop their understanding and appreciation of diversity, celebrating what we have in common and promoting respect. 
• is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning. Assessment is used to help learners to embed and use knowledge fluently, to check understanding and to inform teaching. 
• has a rigorous approach to the teaching of reading, writing and oracy that develops learners’ confidence and enjoyment of learning. 
• provides a range of opportunities to ignite a passion for learning – each term will start with a ‘memorable experience’. 

We look after staff wellbeing to enable staff to look after the wellbeing of our children. We keep after school commitments and meetings to a minimum and have an appraisal system in place to help staff be even better. Teachers in their second year of teaching are entitled to the OLEVI ‘Improving Teacher Programme’ and in their fourth year the ‘Outstanding Teacher Programme’. All staff have access to relevant and timely professional development along with our ever growing professional development library. 

We strongly encourage a visit to see our wonderful school, to make an appointment please email cathryn.taylor@queen-emmas.oxon.sch.uk

For more information about our school please visit our website at www.queen-emmas.oxon.sch.uk or contact the HR Team on hr@millacademy.co.uk to arrange an informal discussion.

Applications should be made on the MILL Academy teaching staff application form and returned to jobs@millacademy.co.uk with a letter supporting your application of no more than 2 sides. Unaccompanied CVs will not be accepted.

Closing date for applications: Tuesday 23rd April 2019 at 9am