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Learning journey - make it a poster

Tuesday, 21 May 2013

I had an interesting and enjoyable day marking M-level posters at Warwick University Institute of Education. The PGCE students had an assignment to critically reflect on their own personal learning journey towards becoming a maths specialist in primary schools, presenting their work as a large poster. 


In a previous blog on learning journeys, I talked about linking a working wall to the learning that takes place in a unit of work. It makes sense for a working wall to show some sort of progress in the children’s learning, from the start of their journey through to their expected outcomes at the end of the unit. The tricky bit is finding the space for this on the precious walls in the classroom – those at child height and easy to read.


A thought I had while marking the PGCE posters is how useful this would be for children to do, on a smaller scale, perhaps at the end of each term or at the end of the year. Time for reflection is something we struggle to fit in to our over-crowded timetable, but if children had the opportunity to design a poster showing their thoughts, fears, hopes, new understanding, ‘eureka’ moments, challenges, successes, targets… then this would be time well spent.

Let the children look back through their maths books and any work they have done to remind themselves of the journey they have been on and then encourage them to be creative with their design. Maybe they could include key words typed up and cut out to stick on the poster and they could certainly include small pieces of work to show the things they now understand. The design could be anything that appeals to their sense of being on a journey or of growth – a tree, roads, insects, butterflies, a game board (like snakes and ladders), a rocket in space… anything really to reflect their feelings over the term or year.

These A4 or A3 posters could be displayed and then stuck in their books at the end of each term – a nice way to show the progress they are each making in their own personal learning journey posters.

WarwickUni
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Linking a working wall to a learning journey

How are they different? How can you link them together?

How one teacher linked a working wall to a learning journey

This working wall highlighted appropriate vocabulary, whereas perhaps the next one could look at pictorial representation of the particular maths area.
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