BACK TO SCHOOL: Target Setting and Evaluation - Student Engagement, Reflection - 50 Activities

This product has been designed to use with students across many grades to support them in thinking about the process of learning, what they have learnt, how they have learnt it, and what steps they need to take next in order to develop both their learning skills and their subject knowledge.

This resource pack contains 50 different activities.

Following the contents an introduction to the product, an overview of each activity can be found(6 pages). This is then followed by the 50 activities divided into three parts:

1. Prior Knowledge to learning about to take place (5 activities)
2. Reflecting on our learning after specific activities and/or whole projects completed (32 activities)
3. Reviewing learning styles and target setting (13 activities)

Part 1 encourages the children to think about what they already know about the topic which they are about to study. It focused on preconceptions and misconceptions, as well as what they might have heard from others who have previously studied the topic or talked about the content with them. More importantly, it provides an opportunity for students to state what they would like to learn from the topic and ask five questions which they would like to be able to answer by the end of the unit – supporting more autonomy in their learning and responsibility for finding out those answers.

Part 2 provides 32 different activities which allow the children to reflect on what they have learnt about the topic, or themselves as learners. They provide opportunities for children to record in different ways, beyond the textbook, exactly what they have learnt, how they learnt it, and what they would like to know next. Each activity is a positive response to learning – even when learning might not have had a positive outcome – there are activities which allow the children to explore what they thought would happen, what actually happened, and how they have developed as a result of that experience. Over the course of a year, the students will develop a whole repertoire of sharing their learning experiences through introducing these activities. The activities are structured to ensure that they are within meaningful and structured contexts.

Part 3 review learning, the skills the students used and encourages them to reflect on what went well and what they want to improve on. It encourages students to think about the things they want to achieve, and the actions they can take to support that achievement. It offers opportunities to think about their skills as learners and how they can improve those skills. They are encouraged to set targets for their learning, then take each target and set small, achievable steps for each of the targets with dates alongside each – so creating a learning development journal. By the end of Part 3, children will have reflected upon the previous learning, and how they learn, and set targets for developing skills in the 5R’s (responsibility, resilience, resourcefulness, readiness and reflectiveness). Each of the targets will also encourage the students to think about “Small Steps to Achieving Success” – so taking a target they would like to achieve and breaking that target down into smaller, more manageable chunks. In doing so, students see the targets as achievable, and with regular reviews, can see their progress towards achieving the bigger targets.

With so much reflection on how students learn and in setting targets, the 50th activity is to design a cover for a “Target Book”. This will allow the students to keep their targets together in one place and monitor their progress towards achievement.

Not all activities need to be completed. They have been produced to provide different ways of reviewing and evaluating learning in a range of structured, fun, yet meaningful contexts.

Each of these activities should be introduced by the teacher and discussed in full with the group of children including discussing the needs of the activity, ideas of how they could be completed, group discussion of ideas and the resources which can be used to support some of the activities. This allows the activities to be matched to a wide range of year groups as teachers can match the activity to the needs, levels, maturity and understanding of the children within their group. Most year groups can achieve these activities with teacher support and reviewing the expectations to allow success.

Some activities do require modelled support as they are more intensive and draw upon prior learning within writing and research skills to ensure that quality outcomes are achieved. For example, in:

• Postcard writing
• Letter writing
• Newspaper reports
• ·Comic Strips

Other activities can be completed with a shorter introduction, explaining the activity, brief demonstration, and then independent completion.

Each activity has a resource sheet, this does not mean that each resource sheet should be copied for the children, many can be shown on the Interactive Whiteboard and the children can complete the activity in their own learning journal/book/paper without the need to photocopy hundreds of resources. Some of the photocopiable sheets could be enlarged to provide a greater space for children to work on, for example, comic strips, movie posters, advice posters and shield designs.

The length of each of the review activities is flexible to the needs and age of the learning group and this can be decided on by the class teacher. As they are all reviews of learning, they could be set for home learning activities, quick activities to evaluate progress following a lesson, or before the next lesson starts to recap what has been learnt. Indeed, some of the activities can be used as evidence for the lesson itself and assessed as such. We have included these creative activities which can be used in any subject area for assessing learning.

We hope you find these resources useful for supporting students in developing their skills in evaluation and discussing their learning, next steps and successful target setting.

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Best wishes

INSPIReducation