What is learning?

At HBJS, we recognise learning as a durable change in long-term memory. Our Long-term memory is made up of interconnected webs of knowledge and concepts called schema. Learning is the intentional and incidental building of this schema. It is the teacher’s ability to build these schemas in the children’s minds that lies at the heart of learning and our curriculum. These webs of knowledge allow new information to be acquired and remembered in the future. Knowledge can be described as being ‘sticky’ in this way.

A schema contains groups of linked memories, concepts or words. This grouping of things acts as a cognitive shortcut, making storing new things in your long-term memory and retrieval of them much quicker and more efficient. They allow children’s processing to become automatic. HBJS teachers explicitly help children to activate and secure prior knowledge and to make connections to new knowledge. Teachers use retrieval practice, direct instruction, formative assessment and generative learning tasks to help achieve this.

At HBJS, we have designed a curriculum that is brought to life by our evidence informed teaching approaches that purposefully builds schema and helps pupils’ be ready to learn new information and for it to stick.

“Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily.“ - Bruner 1960