Planning Thinks for Teachers

This is one of a series of short blogs to hopefully keep you thinking about teaching, assessment and learning.  It jumped into my head when looking at one of my daughter’s birthday presents; a book with a series of writing prompts and some space to make notes.

Whilst all the “thinks”, on a particular page, are connected and inter-related the idea is simply to focus on whichever one or two capture your imagination.  Following reflection it’s worth pondering how you might apply it in your class room.

It’s important that, as teachers, we plan the learning and don’t end up with a series of activities that keep children busy but don’t help them make progress.  Starting with the end in mind, what’s the main concept, big idea, complex skill or great works that you are teaching about in this topic?  If a pupil was to really impress you with their work what would it look like?  This is the “excellence” question; WAGOLL – what a good one looks like.  It’s also important to think about how a pupil might evidence this.  This is all about teacher clarity and that matters.

Once you know pupils’ starting points, a challenge in itself, you can then plan the main steps in their learning; what would these be?  It’s sometimes useful to also think about what the common misconceptions and errors pupils often make on the learning journey.  Forewarned is forearmed.

If you prefer to scribble as you think feel free to download a copy of the “Think” page:

Planning Thinks for Teachers – Word

Planning Thinks for Teachers – PDF

The other “Thinks” for Teachers are:

Assessment “Thinks” for Teachers

Teaching “Thinks” for Teachers

Behaviour “Thinks” for Teachers