Cornerstone
The shared leadership behind three Church of England primary schools in Dales Academies Trust, using Chalk to design purposeful tasks and lighten the load of supporting pupils with SEND.
Cornerstone is the shared leadership behind three small Church of England primary schools in North Yorkshire: Barton, East Cowton and Ravensworth, all part of Dales Academies Trust. Across their mixed-age classes, staff began using Chalk before the Christmas holiday, starting with the three heads and hexagon tools to focus on task design.
"Staff are really engaged and on board. The general feedback is that it's really good."
Lucy Hodges
Deputy Headteacher, Cornerstone (Dales Academies Trust)
What Teachers Love
Purposeful Task Design
Cornerstone asked staff to focus on the three heads and hexagons first, so that every lesson ends with a real, purposeful task after the teacher's input.
Visuals That Stick
"What I like is the visual and the text together. If we always use the same image, it lets children think, 'ah yes, that's this', and gives them that repetition."
Loved for Writing
"They're loving the visual storyboards. They're finding those really useful for their writing." Staff are now dabbling beyond the starter tools and finding their own uses across the curriculum.
How Cornerstone Uses Chalk
Task design
The three heads and hexagons give children something purposeful to do once the teaching is done, and they are now a regular sight in classrooms.
Writing
Visual storyboards help children plan and structure their writing, with the picture and the words working together.
SEND support
Consistent visuals paired with text give pupils the repetition they need to secure foundational skills, which matters in a class where 12 of 21 children have SEND.
Great Teaching in Practice
High challenge, high support
Cornerstone treats challenge and support as partners, not opposites. The aim is to keep tasks demanding while giving every child the scaffolds they need to meet them.
Accessible for all
Pairing the same image with the same words, lesson after lesson, builds the repetition that helps pupils with SEND recognise and recall foundational ideas.
From Word to seconds
"One member of staff was drawing hexagons in Word and trying to format them by hand. Now she can just do it on Chalk. It's probably saved her hours."
Lucy estimates staff save around half an hour on a single hexagon task, time that goes straight back into the children rather than into formatting. In a class where differentiating for a dozen pupils with SEND can feel relentless, that recovered time adds up quickly.
Looking ahead
Lucy is keen on Chalk's new strategy recommendation tool, which suggests evidence-based approaches for individual pupils and then helps staff create the resources to go with them. For a school where local SEND advice can feel generic, she sees it filling a real gap.
"What some staff struggle with is knowing what to do, and then generating the resources to go with it. For the teacher with 12 SEND children in her class, that would be a game changer."
Ready to spend less time formatting and more time teaching?
Join schools like Cornerstone in designing purposeful, accessible tasks in minutes.
Case Study by Chalk Learning • chalklearning.io