Using Bedrock for the humanities at St. Anselm's

Video

Secondary

St Anselm's Catholic School

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School size

1,100

Bedrock users

940

Free School Meals

18%

Ofsted rating

Good

Bedrock partner since

July 2021

Why Bedrock?

A key challenge identified in the humanities department is that learners are seemingly less inclined to read long texts, preferring bite-sized chunks of information and these smaller snippets often don’t include that academic vocabulary that it is so important for learners to encounter. Bedrock ticks both boxes, teaching complex tier 3 vocabulary in bite-sized chunks.

Bedrock's impact

One history teacher noted that her Year 8 learners are being exposed to and are understanding words around sanitation and the industrial revolution that older year 11 learners often struggle with. Teachers also feel that Bedrock Mapper helps them to focus their curriculum content so that it more precisely addresses their key concepts.

It was really fantastic to watch them really come alive with keywords around healthcare and sanitation in the Industrial Revolution - words that our GCSE students struggle with - for them to come in and actually tell us more than our GCSE students knew [was fantastic].

Lucie Turner

History Teacher

St Anselm's Catholic School, located in Canterbury, has fully embedded Bedrock Learning into their humanities subjects as part of their whole school literacy solution. Feedback from both teachers and learners has demonstrated the incredible impact that explicit teaching of tier 3 vocabulary can have across the whole school.

The explicit vocabulary instruction alongside multi-modal and repeated exposure to new words that Bedrock provides has been revolutionary for learners in History and Geography in taking a word and unlocking the concept behind it, before they arrive in the lesson.

We use Bedrock now as a great pre-learning tool. The Mapper words are fantastic. We haven't stopped using keywords, we've continued to use them, but now they're embedded and students are able to see that word and they already know about it, they already feel comfortable with it. They walk into your lesson and tell you what they already know.

Lucie Turner

History Teacher

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