“…teachers observe pupils carefully. They build up a picture of what each child finds motivating and engaging. This information is then used to create exciting and purposeful learning activities.” – Ofsted (June 2023)

In this session participants will be talked taken through the Sunningdale School’s unique use of the Engagement Model and how its use has been developed to effectively underpin Pre-formal, Semi-formal and Informal Curriculum Approaches including play-based-learning. At Sunningdale School we made the decision that we wanted pupils to be active agents as opposed to passive recipients in their learning and development. We want them to be active explorers and be able to apply their thinking.

The starting point for this is an understanding of what each child’s ability to engage with their environment looks like. Qualitative recordings of pupils’ engagement in the areas of Initiation, Persistence, Anticipation, Exploration and Realisation (The Engagement Model, 2020) are made regularly and used to build up a picture of how developed each of these are for all pupils in the school. This is an important baseline in establishing how developed each child’s ability to engage with their environment is.

Alongside this, we also record pupils’ motivators in terms of Activities, Resources, Environments, Levels of Support and Times of the Day. This information is used to create overall teaching environments and develop approaches that create the maximum potential for learning for individual pupils. We believe that without engagement, there is no deep learning, effective teaching, meaningful outcome, real attainment or quality progress (Hargreaves, 2006; Carpenter, 2010).

“…documents come to life in the classrooms, which are set out with engaging learning resources that hook pupils into learning.” – Ofsted (June 2023)

This is an online event. You will be sent details on how to access the session in the week leading up to the event date.