Give Pupils a Sense of Progress

'Meaningful learning tasks give students a clear sense of progress leading to mastery. This means that students can see themselves doing tasks they couldn't do before and understanding concepts they couldn't understand before. Work that gives students a sense of improvement as a result of effort gives teachers an opportunity to praise students for their process. That is, teachers can point out that the students' efforts were what led to the progress and improvement over time.'
(Dweck 2010) 

Why I use Learning Journeys.

Learning Journeys were developed as a strategy to foster a 'clear sense of progress' among our students.

Learning Journeys
•Give pupils a sense of purpose 
•Give pupils a strong voice in the learning process 
•Take pupils out of their comfort zone 
•Encourage pupils to challenge themselves
•Make progress visible to students and place an emphasis on progress rather than attainment 
•Indicate to students what skills they need to work on in the future.

How I use Learning Journeys.

Pupils are given a Learning Journey at the start of a unit of work. They are also given a mini assessment task to complete before they receive any teacher input. The mini assessment task allows pupils to identify their starting point on the Learning Journey. Pupils then refer to their Learning Journey throughout the unit of work, using it to track their progress over time and also to select appropriate tasks during their lessons. Each Learning Journey has an accompanying, end of unit Assessment Task. These have been designed to allow pupils to demonstrate the knowledge and skills described in the relevant Learning Journey. For each skill there is a fluency question, a problem solving question and a reasoning question. 
Below are some examples of the Learning Journeys that we use in year 7 and the accompanying assessment tasks.
​Inquiry is embedded into our schemes of work. The learning journeys below are designed to demonstrate pupils' growing independence through participation in Inquiry.
 The dialogue marking template below is used to give feedback to pupils following completion of an assessment task. It was created in collaboration with Andrew Blair  www.inquirymaths.com