I do love a plan. That time spent before a theme or topic commences is one of my favourite parts of teaching. The thrill of creating the framework for a learning journey is fantastic, particularly when you know that you will not cover all of it or the direction that your class will lead you.
In Year 6, we have been following the tried and tested Victorians topic one which is repeated all over the country. I like to plan everything around the topic as much as possible,which can prove difficult when you are supposed to follow a plan outlined by you LA or school policy. I believe a good MTP should satisfy your planning needs and a well structured and linked plan should relinquish the need for weekly plans in the foundation subjects at least.
First of all, I like to brainstorm all idea to do with the topic. These tend to be things I remember from school, ideas I've borrowed from others or general knowledge about the subject.
I then create a spider diagram or learning loop pal with each area as a subheading for a area of learning. Other ideas are then pulled in to flesh out the learning in this area. Different topics lend themselves to a more scientific, literacy or numeracy stance but they all balance out. For those that like to follow the Primary Strategy for numeracy and literacy, I keep a record of which genres and units are covered but spend as long as the children need on them, using the classic; Plan, Teach, Assess strategy. Eventually, I get to something like this below.
I have colour coded this to assist subject leaders in monitoring coverage. In the past, I have included National Curriculum Points of Study, however, with the current state of flux in that department, I haven't bothered.
A new thing at my school is the introduction of Learning Loops. In essence, this is thinking about your intended learning outcomes and working backwards scaffolding skills to achieve the desired outcome. This should be a process conducted with the children, where their learning forms extra 'sub' loops which work towards the objective. This is an example of an area of learning focussing on newspaper reports and the chilling story of Dr Crippen.
The loops at the top focus on writing skills and SPAG input whilst the bottom loops focus on reading and comprehsension. BLP is our school wide policy for talking about learning and stands for Building Learning Power. It encourages the children to talk about their own learning such as collaboration, making links or imagining.
The loops worked well with several loops covered in one lesson. I also found that looking in depth at each skill really focused my teaching but also hindered progress as I scrutinised every aspect of the learning. Give them a try, they also make a very effective display using paper plates.
After our first term, I found some of the learning rather prolonged and too separated for the children to really get their teeth into. I reviewed this and looked at keeping a subject focus to each week or area of learning rather than having a dedicated time each week,eg. Monday afternoon is art. For a real cross curricular approach do we need to remove set times for specific subjects to free up the timetable? I think yes, although in practise schools are governed by room, staff and resource availability.
For the second half of the term our plan looks like this:
In this plan, I have tried to focus on particular foundation subjects which fit with the theme for the week. I hope this will provide a richer learning experience for the children which will feed into their core work. I have also included 'Wow!' Events for each week which I hope will excite and motivate the children and more importantly give them the opportunity to apply their learning.
This is still a work in progress and I think I will always tinker with these ideas which depend on each school setting and the timetable implications they have. I do think the key to all this is squeezing as much learning as possible out of the day so I will try to cover history or geography learning in literacy and vice versa. Happy planning!
