1. Planning for Learning
Mark Jenkins

2. There are 3 Levels of Planning in Schools
LONG TERM
MEDIUM TERM
SHORT TERM

3. LONG TERM PLAN Covers a school year or a key stage
Is based on the requirements of the National Curriculum
Is usually written for each subject area by the subject leader in consultation with class teachers and senior managers
Shows WHAT will be covered in that subject by each year group and WHEN this unit of work will be taught
Often in terms of a simplistic overview
Reviewed annually

4. Needs to address:
breadth
balance
continuity
progression

5. Medium Term Plans: Cover learning for a period of weeks.
Organise coherent units of work around clustered learning objectives and their outcomes – topics / themes
Often highly detailed
May be a half-term or a term, 1 lesson a week, or can be more effective if time is blocked

6. Medium term overview grid –
Medium Term Planning
Overview Grid
Subject
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
English: Speak/Listen
English: Literacy
Mathematics
Science
ICT PE
Special Subject if not included above
Overview grid

7. Who writes the MT plan?
Often written by subject leaders who should have a comprehensive understanding of their area of the curriculum
Such information is often shared and discussed at team meetings
Should be reviewed annually
Consider the medium term plans you have been given
Need to discuss development of THEMES / TOPICS etc. which schools are adopting following E&E. practice varies hugely in schools. Many (most?) still seem to be using discrete planning rather than a truly cross-curricular
approach. Ask them re their experiences in schools on Pre course placement.
LOOK AT ONE LATER

8. Effective Medium Term Planning.
Assessment? How and when does this occur? Build in opportunities for peer, self and teacher assessment.
Evidence of progression? The sequence of lessons scaffolds learning.
Flexibility? Build in space for topical issues and events. Adaptability to meet pupils' learning needs.
Resources and equipment included?
The outdoor classroom? Some tasks will be conducted here.
Time-scale the plan.
Include meaningful cross-curricular links – see handouts
How will the teaching and learning activities provide opportunities to assess pupils' achievements and progress? Show what evidence you will be looking fro from the children and how you will gather this evidence i.e. . how you will show that learning has occurred.
Is there clear progression between lessons which will scaffold pupils’ progression in learning? An effective sequence is one where the different lessons are related to each other and where pupil success in the later lessons depends to a greater extent on them having mastered the earlier ones. In other words the lessons are continuous and progressive. Lessons need to show progression or they can become fragmented and pupils lose track of what is happening. Progression is the cumulative systematic and incremental acquisition of accumulated knowledge, skills and understanding. Medium term plans are the school’s way of ensuring that lesson build on prior know and experience.
Is the plan sufficiently flexible to respond to topical issues and events and adapt to pupils' needs?
What resources and equipment are needed?
Does the plan offer opportunities for work outside the classroom?
Is there a time allocation for the plan? Time will depend on the children’s ability and previous experience
The anture and difficulty of the work-a skill may need to be developed slow a body of knowledge can be imparted quite quickly
How long you have available!!

9. Reminders from the science team!!
Subject area/ Area of Learning:
SCIENCE
*Append a RISK ASSESSMENT
Topic Title
Year group:
Class name:
Overall Aims
Science Knowledge and Understanding
Science Skills
Science Attitudes
Week
Learning objectives
NC refs. / PoS refs./ QCA
Activities
Show progression - knowledge and skill focus
Learning outcomes
Assessment
Opportunities
Include skills
Resources
Curriculum links 1 2 3 4 5
MEDIUM TERM PLANNER
Reminders from the science team!!

10. Subject area/ Area of Learning: Geography Topic Title
MEDIUM TERM PLANNER
Subject area/ Area of Learning:
Geography
Topic Title
Weather Around the World
Year group: 3
Class name: 3 N
Overall Aims
For children to develop an understanding of how and why weather condition vary around the world
For children to develop their understanding of how to use and interpret globes, atlases and maps
Week
Learning objectives
NC refs. / PoS refs./ QCA
Activities
Learning outcomes
Assessment
opportunities
Resources
Curriculum links 1
To investigate why popular holiday destinations may be hotter than our own country.
To use and interpret atlases
QCA unit 7
Intro: In groups children record on white boards their favourite holiday destinations and describe the weather conditions in them. Feedback. Teacher intro to using atlas. (20 mins)
Main activity: In groups children are given one destination to identify on atlas. What might they know about it’s climate from it’s location? Using resource packs they research and make note on to A1 sheets about weather and its effects in their given place. (30 mins)
Plenary: Comparison of findings from groups. Introduce idea of climatic zones (10 mins)
Children are able to identify some holiday destinations in an atlas map and give reasons for its climate type.
Can children correctly predict weather conditions from geographical location?
Record blue and red groups responses during main activity.
Destination packs – one per group.
Atlases pg.
A1 sheets and marker pens
Whiteboards
Science – the earth in space lesson this week will explore how distance from the sun affects temperature on the earth’s surface 2 3 4 5

11. Why do teachers plan lessons?
It enables you to think ahead about the learning you want to take place in your lesson
You can think about the structure, timing and content of your lesson
It reduces the amount of thinking & decision making you will need to do during the lesson, enabling you to focus on fine-tuning
Materials & resources are ready in advance, suited to all needs.
Written plans support future planning
Ask them to brainstorm ahead of revealing.
Take & note feedback before using slide.

12. The Planning and Assessment Cycle
Delivery of teaching and learning objectives
Assessment of pupil progress
Review and target setting
Learning Objectives
Lesson Delivery
Learning Outcomes
During this year you will revisit planning lessons and parts of lessons, but will also move to thinking in a more holistic way about your teaching. You will start to develop a sense of how to differentiate your activities, and of how to integrate assessment in to your planning and delivery, rather than seeing it as an additional but separate activity.
Many of you will have identified the need to differentiate more clearly in your action plans from SE1. Many of you will also have highlighted a need to understand more about assessment practices. Today’s lecture takes you in the beginnings of differentiation, and next week we will look at effective assessment. However, it is impossible to talk about either as separate from the other, or to talk about either as separate from delivery, so the messages will combine across the fortnight.
Generally talk through slide.
In today’s session I will focus mostly on how the planning for one session can work successfully.
Show acetate of plan to start each section for discussion

13. Short-Term Plans (lesson plans)
should evolve directly from medium-term plans
describe the activities to be undertaken in a particular lesson, taking account of the needs of that particular class of pupils
consider the lesson plans you have been given

14. Planning for Learning What do I want the children to learn?
Do the children have sufficient prior knowledge to succeed with the new learning?
How will I formulate the learning objective and make it clear to the children?
Which activities will deliver my objectives?
How will I know if the children are learning; how will they know? What are my success criteria?
NOTE: learning objectives = learning intentions – you will see both terms used.
BREAK HERE.

15. Sharing Your Learning Intentions
In order to be able to share your learning intentions with the children, you need to have thought very clearly about what they are.
Take time to consider what it is you want the children to learn from your lesson – not just do!
Word them carefully in terms of learning
To know….
To understand …..
To be able to ……
Sometimes acronym WALT is used:
We Are Learning To……

16. WALT – We Are Learning To…
Learning intention on teacher’s plan says:
“To investigate how settings and characters are built up from small details and To identify the main characteristics of key characters, drawing on the text to justify views”
When shared with the children it might read like this:
“We are learning to find clues from the text about the characters in The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe.”
Consider our plan. The teacher’s learning objective is taken straight from the literacy strategy. However, she actually needs the children to do two things. She needs to know that they understand how characters are built up through details in the text, and she needs to know ( for some of her higher achievers) that they can justify how they describe characters from evidence in the text. She will most likely state both learning intentions, and then leave the differentiation to the planning for the activities and her assessment of pupil progress in the plenary and from her LSA’s input.
By wording the intention for the children in the way that she has, she has made the intention very specific. They know what they will be looking for in the text that day. How much time she needs to spend on explaining to them how to scan the text for the clues will depend on whether they have already had a similar lesson where they covered setting, and how they did in this.

17. Success Criteria:
What are the success criteria? How will you and they know how well learning is progressing?
Ensure that there is a clear link between what you want children to learn, what you ask them to do, what you expect as an outcome at the end of the lesson and the feedback you give.
USE PORTRAIT EXAMPLE FOR SUBTLETY

18. WILF –What I’m Looking For…
You will write some sentences which describe your character or characters.
You sentences will contain adjectives that show your understanding of personality traits.
I will know that you really understand when you talk about where you found your evidence in the text.
Just flag up title – leave the text until end of talk for this slide.
To really consolidate for the children what she wants them to learn, she also needs to tell them how she will know that they know how to find clues in the text about character. In order to do this she needs to identify success criteria.
Let’s go back to her plan. What has she written in as activities? What will the children do that will show her that they have understood. To make the success criteria clear with the children she will have to have explained the activities first. Thus, she won’t be using WILF necessarily at the same time as WALT. What might her WILF look like for this lesson?

19. Lesson Planning A-Z

20. Planning Examples
Look at the sheet you have been given, it is designed for ICT use and is expandable. What do you think?

21. Planning a Lesson Using the themes from National Curriculum History
With a partner
Take time to determine a lesson which could be undertaken in a particular age group
Ensure you develop a lesson to meet your learning objective and engage all of the children

22. Choose one of the following themes
Key Stage 1
Key Stage 2
Changes in their own lives and the way of life of their family
The way of life of people in the more distant past – who lived in the local area or elsewhere
Significant men and women drawn from the history of Britain or elsewhere
Past events which are commemorated – such as the gunpowder plot, Olympic games etc.
Local history study
Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings
Tudors
Victorian Britain
Britain since 1930
Ancient Greeks
A world history study
such as
Ancient Egypt
Aztecs

23. Sharing Time Look at what other groups have been able to produce

24. Bibliography
DfES (2003) Excellence and Enjoyment: learning and teaching in the primary years. London: DfES
English, E. and Newton, L. (2005) Professional Studies in the Primary School: Thinking Beyond the Standards. London: David Fulton
Jacques, K. and Hyland, R. (2007) Professional Studies: Primary Phase. Exeter: Learning Matters
Kyriacou, C. (1998) Essential Teaching Skills (2nd edition). Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes.