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20 Daws Lane, Mill Hill, London, NW7 4SL

020 8906 2983 | Contact: Mrs Fraser, School Administrator |

Etz Chaim Jewish Primary School

Mastery Approach to Teaching and Learning

The Mastery-learning model forms the basis of our approach to traditional teaching.  This means spending greater time going into more detail about a subject as opposed to racing through the things that all children should know.  Previously, racing through content lead to some children having large gaps in their subject knowledge because the concept they had just learnt was either too big or learnt too quickly. As a primary school, it is our duty to ensure that children have an absolutely solid, concrete understanding of subject knowledge and skills as well as being emotionally resilient for secondary school.

Now, we have the confidence to take learning at a steadier and deeper pace, ensuring that no child is left behind, as well as providing deeper and richer experiences for children who are above the national expectation for their age.  For example children get the opportunity to apply their learning independently through a range of problem solving activities as well as creative ones.

We focus on all children achieving what is expected of their year group and not going beyond this. Evidence shows that children need to be able to understand a concept, apply it in a range of situations independently and then be creative to really understand it. Simply going beyond their year group does not guarantee they understand something, it just means they have heard it.

At Etz Chaim no child will be taught content from the year group above them, they will spend time becoming true masters of content, applying and being creative with new knowledge and skills in multiple ways in their current year group.  The children will consolidate their learning in a variety of ways through continuous provision and the children will record their learning in a number of methods.  For example using photos, videos, recording on a white board.


In short, this means working towards:


We will be doing more of this:

  • Spending longer on one idea
  • Consolidating learning through continuous provision

And less of this:

  • Formal marking with lots of written feedback
  • Covering lots of ideas in one week
  • Formal, long term interventions to boost them out of class

