How we teach

At Hope Valley College, we aim to inspire and nurture every individual student to be the best they can be.

This means we have high expectations for all of our young people. Our teachers are experts, passionate about their subjects. Through our programme of professional learning, we continually develop our teaching and support staff to ensure they can deliver an ambitious and inspiring education, tailored to the needs of Hope Valley College students.

Our teaching is responsive. This means that we use a wide range of student responses to plan and adapt teaching in order to ensure that all students fulfil their potential. We plan our questioning and assess carefully so that we can check for understanding, challenge misconceptions and engage all of our students in the next steps of their learning. We encourage all students to be active learners, maximising participation in all their lessons.

We explicitly teach vocabulary so that students have the language skills they need to access the ambitious curriculum. All teachers are trained to meet special educational needs: in partnership with our teaching assistant team, we scaffold and support students so that they can all aim high.

We work to ensure that students remember more of what they have learnt. We use retrieval practice strategies including low stakes quizzes and self-testing homeworks so that students practise the skills they have been taught and embed the understanding they need for success.

We work to develop students' oracy skills as well as their literacy and numeracy skills so that we enable students to become confident communicators.

You can read more about the curriculum that we offer on our curriculum page.