Pebbles and WALTs

I have started reading part of Clarity in the Classroom and something that struck me that I’m not currently doing and that I need to get better at is setting learning expectations.

Over the last few weeks whilst I’ve had fun (and the children too) exploring the world of our senses and movement I had no clear objectives and so the lessons kind of meandered through all sorts of areas very loosely connected to movement. Whilst I know it is essential to be adaptive to the childrens’ needs and interests, I need to be much clearer with my aims and communicate this to them so I can be held accountable for achieving these.

Maths is an easier area to have intentions and build a plan around them, but I still feel I haven’t done this particularly well. I need to start asking myself “Why?” when planning the learning to make sure that it links back clearly to my overall aim / focus / goal / intention. Our Progress Pebbles from last year are great to help with number knowledge and need to be developed further so they cover more areas in more detail – add/sub etc.

Before launching on my “Writing Inquiry” I draw up some pebbles based on our progressions to make them more cognitively portable. I need to dig these out and start using them – even break some of the steps down even further so we can see even the smallest progression clearly.

The Pebbles are a great tool for us to use to look at progress, and for the children to use so they can see what they have achieved and to know their next steps.

Whilst they can be quite time consuming to make I think that I would benefit from having most things “Pebbled” so I can see the progressions and the focus for learning and make this cognitively portable.