Our Approach

At the Beacon of Light School students are at the very heart of our school.

We are passionate about embedding strong foundations and values for their future achievement and success through our core values of honesty, kindness, and respect; success supported by the high-quality teaching and learning students experience during their time with us.

We believe in the concept of lifelong learning and the idea that both adults and children continue to learn new things every day throughout the course of their lives. Recognising that every student is an individual, we celebrate this through personalised, inspiring, and authentic learning experiences which are carefully designed to nurture talent, build character, and help to shape futures.

We maintain that learning should be a rewarding and enjoyable experience for everyone. Through our teaching we aim to equip our students with the skills, knowledge and understanding necessary to be able to make informed choices about the important things in their lives. We believe that appropriate teaching and learning experiences help people to lead happy and rewarding lives.

The key focus of our curriculum provision is to enhance essential academic skills, whilst also providing students with a range of opportunities and experiences focused around personal development and wellbeing.

The curriculum at the Beacon of Light is very much about early intervention to increase levels of confidence, motivation and engagement. The Beacon of Light School encourages students to achieve Level 2 outcomes to support their pathways at post-16.

For more information, visit our Curriculum page.

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This approach to teaching and learning is founded on the belief that every student can make exceptional progress and that it is the role of teachers to find a way to make sure that this is ‘inevitable’.  

‘Inevitable Progress’ was first developed at Sedgefield Community College and the collection of teaching and learning strategies was initially called The Learning Box. The effectiveness of this ‘toolbox’ of strategies has been integral to the success of the school over recent years and has resulted in both regional and national recognition.   

Because of the proven impact of the Inevitable Progress approach, it is now used across each of the Laidlaw School Trust’s secondary schools and has been adapted to be used in the Beacon of Light School.  

These are the principles of teaching and learning that can be seen in our school to ensure students make inevitable progress.  

Learning Ladders 

Learning ladders provide a common structure and language to learning in GCSE subjects. These can be used by staff and students to allow meaningful discussions about learning and the progress that is taking place.  They also provide a personalised learning pathway for each student, ensuring maximum progress is achieved. 

Students move up the ladder as they learn more but also move across it as they deepen their understanding. They move from remembering and understanding information, to applying and analysing it.  

Graphic Organisers. 

There are several different graphic organizers that link to types of thought processes. These act as visual prompts and help students to organize their thoughts during their learning.  

Bubble maps help students collect information linked to a particular topic or concept 

Double Bubble maps help students list the similarities and differences between to topics or concepts 

I do, We do, You do. 

We use I do, We do, You do symbols and language in all lessons. This helps all students to master what they need to learn, gradually builds confidence and reduces the responsibility from the teacher to the students, this ensures students are all making inevitable progress.  

In the I do stage the teachers explains the concepts and models processes 

In the We do stage we work together using scaffolds and prompts to deepen our understanding. 

In the You do stage students demonstrate their understanding independently.  

Memory and Recall 

We build regular opportunities for recall into lessons, all lessons begin with a short, low stakes retrieval quiz and concepts are revisited and cross links with other topics formed. This helps students move knowledge to their long-term memory, which is crucial if they are to make inevitable progress.  

Scaffolding and chunking 

We adapt learning to ensure the needs of all students are met; this means providing scaffolding for tasks such as checklists, word banks and writing frames and chunking tasks so all students make inevitable progress.  

Settler Grid 

Our students like to know what to expect when they enter a classroom, this eases any anxiety and sets clear expectations. All lessons start with a task from our Settler Grid, so every student can begin working as soon as they enter a learning space. A settled start for students is another step in making inevitable progress.  

Literacy  

Any key words for a lesson are introduced at the start of a lesson. The root word for that lesson/subtopic is then broken down and the origin and meaning discussed. This helps students develop the vocabulary needed to make inevitable progress. Lessons include reading, writing and oracy tasks.  

We offer reading intervention to students who would most benefit. Our intervention programme covers reading, compression and transcription.