Academic Stretch & Support
At Berkhamsted Prep, children are appropriately challenged while maintaining their excitement and enthusiasm for learning.
All abilities
With the understanding that as an individual, children learn and acquire knowledge differently, our approach at Berkhamsted Prep seeks to apply a fluid and adaptive approach to learning that will challenge and support every child. Effective assessment strategies ensure we use each child’s starting point as a baseline for learning so that all future learning is built on a firm foundation and provides a springboard for stretch and challenge across the curriculum.
Based on research, we seek to keep children in their flow, so that learning stretches their brain according to a child’s aptitude and ability, alongside developing the core skills of learning. Providing opportunities that will develop critical thinking, reasoning and communication is core to our approach, where learning is neither too challenging, so children become anxious, nor too easy that leads to boredom.
“(Flow is) a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it”- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1990.
In essence, we hope to develop a lifelong love for learning, so that our children have their own agency in the learning process. Encouraging them to be curious, engaged and active in their personalised learning journey and able to meet challenges with openness and a sense of ambition to be the best they can be.
At Berkhamsted Prep we offer an inclusive and adaptive approach to learning that ensures we meet the needs of all of our pupils. We recognise that all children are different and actively celebrate neurodiversity. Through flexible and multisensory teaching, we enable our pupils to reach their potential.
The SENCo works alongside the teachers to ensure that the strategies we use for teaching support and develop all pupils. For those pupils who have been identified as having a specific learning need, any additional intervention or support is targeted to those needs. Support at Berkhamsted Prep may include 1:1 programmes or small group sessions with the Learning Support Team. These sessions help to develop the skills to empower the pupils to be independent, motivated and adventurous learners.
LEAP INTO ACTION
Open Events
Value added is the name of the game: most enter the nursery at national standard, but by year 6 the vast majority are well beyond it, with many of them significantly above.
Pupils develop their self-knowledge, self-esteem and resilience to a mature level, encouraged by the school’s focus on perseverance.
