Tutoring at Granton Primary School
First Wave of Tutoring: The Granton Hour 2020
What was it?
The Granton Hour was a virtual teaching programme delivered for five weeks during the summer holidays of 2020. It was delivered for an hour, from 9:00 to 10:00am, Mondays to Fridays, with the first session on Monday 27th July 2020. The programme consisted of 25 English and 25 mathematics lessons.
How was it delivered?
It was delivered by teachers using a safe and secure digital platform, Microsoft Teams, reconfigured for education purposes. There was one teacher delivering a full unit of work for each week. The teaching was followed by short independent work for pupils to complete.
Why did need it?
While Granton Primary School delivered the FULL curriculum via our Learning from Home strategy during the COVID19 lockdown, we felt it was necessary to secure pupils’ competencies in reading and mathematics to enable them to move swiftly to next year’s curriculum.
We worked closely with subject leaders to identify those essential learning outcomes which pupils need to learn securely before moving on to next academic year’s curriculum objectives.
Tutoring 2021/22 and 2022/2023
In the academic year 2021/2022, a total of 155 disadvantaged pupils received a cumulative total of over 10,000 hours of tutoring. Staff delivered an of hour tutoring on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from 3:30- 4:30. This was for the whole of Autumn 2021 and Spring 2022. This was replicated in the whole of Autumn 2021 and of Spring 2022.
Tutoring focussed on Reading and Mathematics. Reading tutoring was delivered using Lightning Squad. Tutoring with the Lightning Squad (TWL) is the FFT Success for All early reading tutoring programme where pupils work in small groups or individually with a tutor to improve their reading skills. The tutoring is a blended approach with face-to-face tutoring supported by an online tutoring platform. The tutoring activities are designed and structured to improve reading skills, fluency, comprehension, spelling and phonics. Pupils work through especially written, engaging and illustrated stories.
Mathematics was delivered using Power Maths materials. Power Maths (published by Pearson, and developed in partnership with White Rose Maths) is a world-class and unique UK curriculum mastery teaching programme created by leading educational experts from the UK and China.
Recommended by the UK's Department for Education, it has been designed to spark pupils' excitement and curiosity about maths whilst developing their confidence. It combines interactive teaching tools, rich and quality textbooks and practice books for primary aged children.
It is built around a child-centred lesson design that models and embeds a growth mindset approach to maths and focuses in helping all children to build a deep understanding of maths concepts. It also has a continuous and embedded approach to teacher support and professional development throughout.
Impact of Tutoring
Reading
Mathematics
