Last academic year, my school @rodbournecheney (proud member of WhiteHorseFed) launched our aim of creating a ‘learning journey for all’ approach with great success.
The desire to embed this practice came from a range of ideas, thoughts and processes. As a profession, we always compliment EYFS for their excellent recording and acknowledgement of the whole child through their rigorous record keeping and the collating evidence for their learning journeys. In addition, as a parent I was thrilled when I received my EYFS daughter’s books/ learning journey as it was a real heartwarming keepsake. I also loved the fact it felt as if the teacher, and the school, really knew my daughter and captured her whole learning in depth. With this is mind, it seemed to make perfect sense to use this approach for every child.
This was something we wanted to complete for the whole school. As we move more towards a mastery approach, this format also seems an ideal way of showing all types of learning, including SMSC development.
At present, we collate a range of information and work. We have two main books :
1. English and curriculum
2. Maths and reasoning
We believe these books are more evidence books rather than just work books. We collect lots of information, photos and gather a range of evidence. These include :
- Written work
- Whiteboard work
- Self and peer marking strategies
- (Lots of) photographs that are annotated
- Observations from both teachers and TAs (all the way up to year 6)
- Parent contributions to their child’s learning
We also cross reference evidence, for example we will add science and PE to maths.
Our teachers and support staff are fantastic at recording children’s responses on post-it notes and sticky labels and adding them to children’s books. These observations play an important part in gathering evidence of the learning of that child. This ensures no WOW learning moments are lost.
The children are extremely proud of their learning journeys, this ensures the children are able to talk about their learning and with much enjoyment and enthusiasm too. Due to this the children are also more meticulous and neat with their work. It is always so heart warming to see all of our children (no matter what ability) who are excited to ‘show off’ their learning journeys with others and their peers.
We have parent sharing events where parents come in to look at the books with the children once a term; these are extremely well received and enjoyed by children and parents alike. During these events, parents complete their own contributions on what their child has learned, developed and enjoyed that also go in their learning journey.
Parent contribution is very important to us. We also ask for responses for academic performance and enjoyment of learning parents see at home. This helps us record how that child is showing a love of learning and how they are mastering their learning in other contexts.
We also ask parents to include values that we are learning e.g. Friendship. Parents write how children have displayed the quality of friendship at home, such as played nicely with siblings, played with a lonely child in the park, made a get well card for their best friend etc. Parents can write about this or bring in photographs (or both) if they prefer.
We include evidence from :
Literacy
Maths
Scientific
Physical development
Social, moral
Values
Behaviour
Outside of school learning
The children love looking at photos of themselves as these really capture learning and a range of emotions. Our KS2 children take ownership of taking their own pictures to go in their books. They are also fantastic at taking photos of each other.
We are proud of our ‘learning journeys for all’ approach. If you would like more information on this, then please contact me through Twitter @lisiedavies
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